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 The Birth of the City of Miami


 by Larry Wiggins


 Just over one hundred years ago, in 1895, three stubborn vision-
aries came together to create Miami and, in doing so, open all of
then-pristine South Florida to development. The Tuttle and Brickell
families possessed land. Henry M. Flagler owned a railroad and
possessed the capital to transform the land from a wilderness into a
city. The partnership between them was at times adversarial, the
consequences sometimes disappointing, but the resulting Magic City
would, over the next century, grow into something greater than they
could have ever imagined.
 The Brickell family, consisting of William, his wife Mary, and
eight adult children ranging in age from 18 to 38, lived on the south
bank of the mouth of the Miami River where they operated a trading
post and post office. They arrived in 1871 from Cleveland and pur-
chased a vast stretch of land that extended from the banks of the
river south to near today's Coconut Grove. They also owned prop-
erty on the north side of the New River in today's Fort Lauderdale.'
 Julia Tuttle and her children, Harry and Fanny, lived across the
river from the Brickells. Tuttle, who came to Miami in 1891 after
purchasing a tract of 640 acres of land on the north bank of the
Miami River, was also from Cleveland. Tuttle's husband, Frederick,
died in 1886, and she decided to move to South Florida due to what
was described as the "delicate health" of her children. Tuttle had
seen the area in 1875, at the age of twenty-six, when she visited her
father, Ephraim Sturtevant, who homesteaded in the area of today's


Larry Wiggins is the Controller for the South Dade News Leader, a news-
paper in Homestead, where he has been employed for 17 years. He gradu-
ated from the University of Miami in 1978. He was chairman of the
Historic Preservation Board of the City of Homestead at the time of and
during the recovery from, Hurricane Andrew.