Fort Lauderdale City Map Poster

About Fort Lauderdale

The area in which the city of Fort Lauderdale would later be founded was inhabited for more than two thousand years by the Tequesta Indians. The Tequesta occupied the area for a thousand years before encountering Europeans. An Indian village of hundreds of people dating to 500–600 B.C., was located at the mouth of the Miami River, where it met Biscayne Bay, and another village that extended along both banks on either side is believed to have been an outpost from one or more larger villages inland.[9] The first non-Indian settlement in what is now Broward County was a group camped near today's Fort Lauderdale Marina in 1566; however, those settlers moved north with their leader Pedro Menéndez de Avilés after having troubles with natives further south on Florida's east coast.[10][11] In 1815 there were only four families living on today's downtown waterfront: William Cooley (the namesake for Colee Hammock), James Hadden (whose house stood at Northeast 3rd Avenue and 5th Street), John Simmons Jr.