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While the modern
history of Dade County begins with the arrival of the first permanent
white
settlers, in the early part of the 19th century, the remoteness of the
area limited its development to a handful of farms and plantations,
plus
a few small settlements, until the arrival of the railroad in 1896. The
city of Miami was incorporated in the same year.
The original Dade
County settlements were all built near the Biscayne Bay, but the great
influx of new residents, in the early 1900s, made it necessary to build
canals to drain the uninhabitable land of the Everglades. The steady
arrival
of newcomers gave way to the Florida Land Boom of the 1920's, but
transportation
problems, a major hurricane and, finally, the Great Depression, brought
the Boom to a halt.
Steady growth
continued, however, and in the years following World War Two, the
county
has become a major metropolitan area. The arrival of Cuban refugees in
the 1960s and 1980s, plus a large influx of other immigrants, has
transformed
Dade into a multi-cultural society.
In 1991, the population
of Dade County was nearly two million. Tourism and transportation are
among
the major industries, along with light industry, construction and
fishing.
There are twenty-five incorporated towns and cities in the county. The
largest, at around 350,000 people, is the county seat, Miami.
In review, Dade
County was officially organized from Monroe County February 4,
1836.
Some one hundred sixty one years later, November 13, 1997, Miami -Dade
County has emerged. As with any change in a political structure,
the voters decided that increased name recognition was worth the change.
(Reference The
Florida Handbook 1999-2000, p. 445.)
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