South Florida is a scrapbook with zoning laws. Explore stories by place, from riverfront properties with suspiciously frequent ownership changes to bars where “history” still orders a drink.
- The Cocaine Cowboys Who Built (and Bled) South Florida
Before the luxury towers. Before the rooftop bars. Before the influencers and the Art Basel crowds and the $22 cocktails on Las Olas, South Florida ran on cocaine. Not metaphorically. Literally. In the late 1970s and through most of the 1980s, South Florida became the primary port of entry forContinue Reading - Rumrunners & River Kings: How Prohibition Put Broward on the Map
Prohibition didn’t make Americans stop drinking.It made them better planners. When the Volstead Act went into effect in 1920, Washington imagined a country sobering up out of respect for the law. South Florida imagined supply chains. You don’t ban a habit. You reroute it. And Broward County, quietly, was alreadyContinue Reading - The New River Knows Things: How Water Shaped Power in Fort Lauderdale
If you want to understand Fort Lauderdale, don’t start with the skyline.Look down. Before the towers, before the drawbridges learned their choreography, before anyone thought “waterfront” meant brunch, the river was already making decisions. The New River didn’t wait for permission. It didn’t follow a polite, linear plan. It bent,Continue Reading - Founding Rumors: Why Fort Lauderdale Was Built on Whispers
Every city has a founding myth.Fort Lauderdale has a founding rumor. Not the kind involving buried treasure or noble pioneers shaking hands at sunset. This one is quieter. Less ceremonial. It sounds like a boat idling just out of sight, a ledger that never quite balances, a shrug followed byContinue Reading
