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 Fort Lauderdale Land Boom That Ate Itself: 1920s Real Estate Fever on the New River
Fort Lauderdale’s median home price as of early 2026 sits around $658,000. Waterfront lots along the New River? Enter a different tax bracket entirely. South Florida real estate has always felt a little unhinged, but there was a moment in the mid-1920s when the whole thing didn’t just feel unhinged.Continue Reading - Wrecker Camps of the Broward Coast: How Shipwrecks Fed a County
Before there were real estate developers, there were wreckers… and a good storm was more valuable than a good harvest. On the morning of October 4, 1873, a three-masted schooner called the Victor ran hard onto the outer reef roughly two miles off what would later become Fort Lauderdale Beach.Continue Reading - 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