Place:Miami, Miami-Dade, Florida, United States

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Miami, officially the City of Miami, is a major city and a coastal metropolis located in Miami-Dade County in southeastern Florida, in the United States. With a population of 442,241 as of the 2020 census, it is the second-most populous city in Florida, the eleventh-most populous city in the Southeast U.S., and the 44th most populous city in the nation. Miami is the core of the nation's ninth largest and world's 34th largest metropolitan area with a population of 6.138 million people as of 2020.^[1] The city has the third largest skyline in the United States with over 300 high-rises, 58 of which exceed .

Miami is a major center and leader in finance, commerce, culture, arts, and international trade. The metro area is by far the largest urban economy in Florida and the 12th largest in the United States, with a GDP of $344.9 billion as of 2017. In 2020, Miami was classified as a Beta + level global city by the GaWC. In 2019, Miami ranked seventh in the United States and 31st globally in business activity, human capital, information exchange, cultural experience, and political engagement. According to a 2018 UBS study of 77 world cities, Miami is the second richest city in the United States and third richest globally in purchasing power. Miami is a majority-minority city with a Hispanic population of 310,472, or 70.2 percent of the city's population, as of 2020.

Downtown Miami has one of the largest concentrations of international banks in the United States and is home to many large national and international companies. The Health District is home to several major University of Miami-affiliated hospital and health facilities, including Jackson Memorial Hospital, the nation's largest hospital with 1,547 beds, and the Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine, the University of Miami's academic medical center and teaching hospital, and others engaged in health-related care and research. PortMiami, the city's seaport, is the busiest cruise port in the world in both passenger traffic and cruise lines, and refers to itself as the "Cruise Capital of the World". Miami is also a major tourism hub for international visitors, ranking second in the country after New York City. Miami has sometimes been called the "Gateway to Latin America" because of the magnitude of its commercial and cultural ties.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

The Tequesta tribe occupied the Miami area for around 2,000 years before contact with Europeans. A village of hundreds of people, dating to 500–600 BCE, was located at the mouth of the Miami River. It is believed that the entire tribe migrated to Cuba by the mid-1700s.

In 1566, admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, Florida's first governor, claimed the area for Spain. A Spanish mission was constructed one year later. Spain and Britain successively ruled Florida until Spain ceded it to the United States in 1821. In 1836, the U.S. built Fort Dallas on the banks of the Miami River as part of their development of the Florida Territory and their attempt to suppress and remove the Seminoles. As a result, the Miami area became a site of fighting in the Second Seminole War.

Miami is noted as the only major city in the United States founded by a woman. Julia Tuttle, a local citrus grower and a wealthy Cleveland native, was the original owner of the land upon which the city was built. In the late 19th century, the area was known as "Biscayne Bay Country", and reports described it as a promising wilderness and "one of the finest building sites in Florida". The Great Freeze of 1894–1895 hastened Miami's growth, as the crops there were the only ones in Florida that survived. Julia Tuttle subsequently convinced railroad tycoon Henry Flagler to extend his Florida East Coast Railway to the region, for which she became known as "the mother of Miami". Miami was officially incorporated as a city on July 28, 1896, with a population of just over 300.

African American labor played a crucial role in Miami's early development. During the early 20th century, migrants from the Bahamas and African-Americans constituted 40 percent of the city's population. Despite their role in the city's growth, their community was limited to a small space. When landlords began to rent homes to African-Americans around Avenue J (what would later become NW Fifth Avenue), a gang of white men with torches marched through the neighborhood and warned the residents to move or be bombed.^[2]

Miami prospered during the 1920s with an increase in population and development in infrastructure as northerners moved to the city. The legacy of Jim Crow was embedded in these developments. Miami's chief of police at the time, H. Leslie Quigg, did not hide the fact that he, like many other white Miami police officers, was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Unsurprisingly, these officers enforced social codes far beyond the written law. Quigg, for example, "personally and publicly beat a colored bellboy to death for speaking directly to a white woman".^[2]

The collapse of the Florida land boom of the 1920s, the 1926 Miami Hurricane, and the Great Depression in the 1930s slowed development. When World War II began, Miami became a base for U.S. defense against German submarines due to its prime location on the southern coast of Florida. This brought an increase in Miami's population; 172,172 people lived in the city by 1940. The city's nickname, The Magic City, came from its rapid growth, which was noticed by winter visitors who remarked that the city grew so much from one year to the next that it was like magic.^[3]

After Fidel Castro rose to power in Cuba following the Revolution in 1959, many wealthy Cubans sought refuge in Miami, further increasing the city's population. Miami developed new businesses and cultural amenities as part of the New South in the 1980s and 1990s. At the same time, South Florida weathered social problems related to drug wars, immigration from Haiti and Latin America, and the widespread destruction of Hurricane Andrew. Racial and cultural tensions sometimes sparked, but the city developed in the latter half of the 20th century as a major international, financial, and cultural center. It is the second-largest U.S. city with a Spanish-speaking majority (after El Paso, Texas), and the largest city with a Cuban-American plurality.

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