The area in which the city of Fort Lauderdale would later be founded was inhabited for more than a thousand years by the Tequesta Indians.

   
The Fort Lauderdale area was known as the "New River Settlement" before the 20th century. In the 1830s there were approximately 70 settlers living along the New River. William Cooley , the local Justice of the Peace , was a farmer and wrecker , who traded with the Seminole Indians . On January 6, 1836, while Cooley was leading an attempt to salvage a
wrecked ship, a band of Seminoles attacked his farm, killing his wife
and children, and the children's tutor . The other farms in the settlement were not attacked, but all the
white residents in the area abandonedthesettlement, fleeing first to the
Cape Florida Lighthouse on Key Biscayne , and then to Key West .

  
The first United States stockade named Fort Lauderdale was built in 1838, and
subsequently was a site of fighting during the Second Seminole War. The
fort was abandoned in 1842, after the end of the war, and the area
remained virtually unpopulated until the 1890s. It was not until Frank Stranahan arrived in the area in 1893 to operate a ferry across the New River, and the Florida East Coast Railroad 's completion of a route through the area in 1896, that any organized development began. The city was incorporated in 1911 , and in 1915 was designated the county seat of newly formed Broward County .

  
Fort Lauderdale's first major development began in the 1920s, during theFlorida land boom of the 1920s . The 1926 Miami Hurricane and the Great Depression of the 1930s caused a great deal of economic dislocation. When World War II began, Fort Lauderdale became a major US base, with a Naval Air Station to train pilots, radar operators, and fire control operators, and a Coast Guard base atPort Everglades was also established.

     

After
the war ended, service members returned to the area, spurring an
enormous population explosion which dwarfed the 1920s boom. The 1960
Census counted 83,648 people in the city, about 230% of the 1950 figure.
A 1967 report estimated that the city was approximately 85%
developed,and the 1970 population figure was 139,590. After 1970, as
Fort Lauderdale became essentially built out, growth in the area shifted to suburbs to the west. In 1980, the city had 153,279 people, and 1990, when the population was 149,377. A slight rebound brought the population back up to 152,397 at the 2000 census. Since 2000, Fort Lauderdale has gained slightly over 18,000 residents through annexation of seven neighborhoods in unincorporated Broward County.yachting center, one of the nation's largest tourist destinations, and the center of a metropolitan division with 1.8 million people. ^{(Thanks to wikipedia .com)} Today, Fort Lauderdale is a major

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"We take care of our health, we lay up money,

we make our room tight, and our clothing sufficient;

but who provides wisely that he shall not be wanting

in the best property of all--friends?"

Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882  American Essayist, Poet and Philosopher