History of MiamiHistory & audio guide · Miami

It's hard to believe Miami has a history. It looks brand-new: skyscrapers, neon, postcard beaches. And yet, beside the river there are traces two thousand years old, left by the Tequesta who lived where the towers now stand. This special travels the full arc, from before the city to today. The Spanish passed through in the 16th century and founded nothing. Miami had to wait until the late 19th century and an unlikely idea: that it was worth building a city on a tropical swamp.

It wasn't born from a mine or a decree, but from the stubbornness of one woman, Julia Tuttle, and Flagler's railroad. In 1896 it was incorporated with around three hundred inhabitants. Since then it has fallen and reinvented itself many times: the real-estate boom of the 1920s, the hurricane of '26, the Depression, and the Art Deco that turned it into a sun destination. In 1959, Cuban exile transformed it again and made it Latin.

Six chapters to understand a city that seems to have no past and is really made of layers: indigenous, pioneer, tourist, Cuban, global. Walk it while Ruthy tells you the story, standing right there, in no hurry.