Fort Lauderdale today is one of America’s most popular destinations, attracting more than 14 million visitors annually. The sights enjoyed by visitors to Motorcoach Expo 2019, however, were rather late in developing.
Southeastern Florida belonged to Spain until 1821—some 18 years after the Louisiana Purchase from France added the vast Midwestern territory to the United States. The Golden Spike driven in 1869 to mark completion of the Transcontinental Railroad connected the American coasts; for nearly another half-century, land along the New River would be impenetrable swamp and Fort Lauderdale could be reached only via the Atlantic Ocean.
The bus industry eventually would become part of the city’s fabric, but a lot of things had to happen first.
Florida’s Atlantic coast and river banks had long been inhabited. “The river was a continuous transportation resource since prehistoric times,” explained Patricia Zeiler, Executive Director of History Fort Lauderdale.
The region’s first European visitor, in 1513, was Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon. He found the Tequesta tribe of Native Americans who had been living there since about 300 B.C. The territory was named “la Florida,” the land of flowers, by de Leon.
Spain ceded eastern Florida to the U.S. in 1821. The Tequesta tribe had given way to the Seminoles, who were clashing with European settlers arriving in the Florida Territory. The city at the mouth of the New River was named for U.S. Army Major William Lauderdale, who established a fort during the Second Seminole War of 1835-42. Florida became the 27th state in the Union in 1845. Further progress and settlement were slow in coming to the peninsula.
“South of Orlando the land started to get dicey,” said Zeiler. “Broward County was 70 to 80 percent underwater at any given time of year.”
The development of Florida’s east coast is largely credited to Henry Flagler, an Ohio businessman who had been given an opportunity to invest in a startup petroleum company. He borrowed $100,000 and told his partner he expected to own one-quarter of the corporation. His partner was John D. Rockefeller and the company was Standard Oil. Within a decade or two, Flagler was capable of pursuing anything that interested him.
He took a fancy to Florida and envisioned a prosperous future for agriculture, settlement and tourism. He bought small railways and obtained a state charter to build another line along the coast.
“He stopped in West Palm Beach in 1894,” Zeiler said. “He knew the terrain and wasn’t coming any further south. He didn’t budge until the winter of 1895, which had two really bad freezes. The first killed all the crops. The second killed all the plants. All the people who had bought property from him along the line lost their shirts.”
Many of those investors were Flagler’s wealthy friends, so he felt the need to extend the rails further south. The trains reached Fort Lauderdale in 1896. But the peninsula still faced the limitations of the swamp.
“Settling that land required dredging and building canals,” Zeiler explained. “They connected Lake Okeechobee with a canal system to the west and east coasts. The first dredging project was started in 1906. It finished in 1912.”
The Fort Lauderdale rail station was quickly joined by a bus depot. “The buses didn’t go terribly far. There was a dirt road cut to Zona, which is Davie today,” Zeiler said. “The people who were working on the dredging projects lived there. They were all people who had worked in the Panama Canal Zone.”
Until 1917, tourists still had to travel by boat to reach the beach on the barrier islands. For years after the drained swamps became fertile agricultural soil—great for tomatoes, pole beans, pineapples and (of course) citrus—and crops were sent down the New River by barge to be loaded on trains at the Fort Lauderdale station.
The first long-distance roadway, the Dixie Highway, reached Fort Lauderdale in 1914, three years after people have traveled across northern parts of the country to view the first Indianapolis 500.
Florida Motor Lines introduced bus service in 1926, consolidating several smaller carriers to form an operation with 150 motorcoaches and 1,290 miles of routes. Among the predecessors were the White Stage Line, which had opened in 1918, and Clyde Passenger Express, which dates to 1914. Greyhound bought Florida Motor Lines in 1946. Southern Florida began to reach its full potential after World War II.
“Florida probably benefited the most from the Eisenhower infrastructure programs and the interstate highway system, as well as the Florida Turnpike,” Zeiler said. “When Interstate 95 came through, that connected the country through Broward County all the way to Miami-Dade County. That was life-changing.”
