Port Everglades - History

History

Port Everglades is composed of land within three municipalities, Hollywood, Fort Lauderdale and Dania Beach and unincorporated Broward County. Port Everglades is a man-made seaport, dredged out of a natural body of water called Lake Mabel. Lake Mabel was a wide and shallow section of the Florida East Coast Canal system. The Florida Board of Trade passed a resolution in 1911 calling for a deepwater port to ship farmers' produce to the North and the West. In 1913, the Fort Lauderdale Harbor Company was formed and eventually dug out the Lake Mabel Cut, opening the New River to the sea for small boats. In 1924, Joseph Wesley Young, founder and mayor of the city of Hollywood, Florida bought 1,440 acres (5.8 km2) of land adjacent to the lake and created Hollywood Harbor Development Company. In 1927, the Florida State Legislature established the Broward County Port Authority. On February 22, 1928, 85 percent of Broward County's residents gathered for a ceremony in which President Calvin Coolidge was to push a button from the White House detonating explosives to remove the rock barrier separating the harbor from the Atlantic Ocean. The button malfunctioned, but the barrier was removed shortly thereafter.

Bay Mabel Harbor was dedicated on February 22, 1928. Several local women's clubs decided a new name was needed to represent the region and conducted a name changing contest. The name Port Everglades was chosen to represent the seaport as "The gateway to the rich agricultural area embraced in the 4 million acres (16,000 km²) at the Port's very backdoor."

Read more about this topic:  Port Everglades

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    The history of the genesis or the old mythology repeats itself in the experience of every child. He too is a demon or god thrown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead things from disorder into order.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.
    Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)

    [Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.
    Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)