LEARN OUR HISTORY
The City of North Miami Beach is nestled in the center of northern Miami-Dade County, close to the sparkling Atlantic Ocean and its intracoastal waterways. Founded in 1926 by settlers who arrived in the early days of the twentieth century, the city has always represented progress, innovation, and dedication by its citizens, from the earliest days of homesteads along the river to the modern day with its gleaming skyscrapers and teeming local businesses.
North Miami Beach today stretches from NE 151 st Street in the south to the beautiful Sky Lake neighborhood at 196 th Terrance in the north, and from the Intracoastal Waterway views of Eastern Shores all the way west to NW 4th Avenue. It is centrally located in northern Miami, sharing borders, communities, and businesses with Sunny Isles Beach to the east, Golden Glades and Miami Gardens to the west, Aventura and Ives Estates to the north, and North Miami and Ojus to the south, making it a vibrant beating heart in the midst of this bustling metropolitan area. With beautiful landmarks such as the Oleta River, the North Miami Beach Fountain, and numerous well-maintained and well-loved parks, it provides space for not just NMB residents but people all over northern Miami to relax, work, play, and pursue their passions.
The history of North Miami Beach begins in antiquity, when it was a hunting ground and important passage for the native Calusa and Tequesta peoples. Settlement of the area began in the late nineteenth century, and what would become North Miami Beach was seeded when Captain William Hawkins Fulford, an early member of what would become the Coast Guard and career military sailor, was assigned to the area in 1890 as keeper of the Biscayne House of Refuge, a convalescent home founded in 1876 to provide care for castaways, victims of shipwrecks, and sailors with career-ending injuries. Fulford sailed the coast and surveyed the area, officially building his homestead on 160 acres granted to him in 1891; although the house no longer stands, its former site is now the location of Fulford Elementary School, one of the community’s oldest and most beloved educational institutions which now bears his name.
Fulford was the first major player to arrive in the area, but he was far from the only one; various hardy pioneer families, determined to create new homes and settlements, arrived throughout the beginning of the twentieth century, including such notables as George and Alice Frohock, John and Lorene Newland, Harry Lapham, Lafayette Allen, David and Thelma Riddle, and Mr. & Mrs. R.E. McDonald, many of whom founded critical city institutions, created the first thriving businesses in the area, and passed their legacy down to descendants who still live and work in the city to this day. By the 1920s, a community had grown up in the wet but beautiful swamplands, paving the way for the Greater Miami Boom, time of unprecedented growth and foundation throughout what would later become Miami-Dade County.
Instrumental in the foundation of the city was the Florida Finance Company, headed by entrepreneur and businessman Merle Tebbetts with his partner Edgar C. Linn, who in 1923 purchased 557 acres of land in what would later become NMB. Christening the neighborhood Fulford-by-the-Sea in honor of the sea captain who began it, the Company planned to build 3,500 residences in the subdivision and began aggressively developing the area, adding beautiful businesses, parks, and homes, and advertising across the nation to encourage homesteaders looking for paradise to make their homes there.
The Company built the city’s first water plant, which would later become the site of the first City Hall, and the area’s first power plant, which for $2 a month would allow area families to receive electrical power between the hours of 6:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. Holiday-makers and potential residents visited Fulford-by-the-Sea via the Sea Foam, a dedicated ferry operated by the company that took visitors directly from downtown Miami’s Flagler Street right to the shores of Fulford-by-the-Sea. This time period saw rapid and incredible advancements for the area, including the building of the WGBU radio station and dance casino in 1923, which hosted outdoor concerts and famously possessed the most powerful radio tower in the American south, standing at over 439 feet tall with broadcasts that could be heard as far away as England. The Fulford Monument, also known as the Fulford Fountain, was built in 1924 to welcome visitors as they entered, a feat of engineering that cost thousands of dollars (an enormous sum at the time) and featured dancing fountain water illuminated by multicolored lights.
Beautiful Central Park, including waterways, tropical plants, and recreational areas, was landscaped beside the new Visitor’s Center; although the park no longer exists in that form today, its location is now occupied by the equally beautiful and popular Victory Park and its swimming pool. Carl G. Fisher, famous automobile entrepreneur and key founder of the nearby city of Miami Beach, also contributed, building the Tropical Island Speedway, an island motor racetrack boasting one of the steepest grades ever used in live competition, to host his Carl G. Fisher Cup professional races.
This period of rapid growth was halted by nature; in 1926, the Great Hurricane tore through the area, killing an estimated 400 people in the greater Miami area as well as damaging and destroying many homes and demolishing the Speedway, which had hosted only a single race during its lifetime. The aftermath of the storm caused many developers and companies to go bankrupt, including the Florida Finance Company, which was forced to abandon its dreams of continuing to expand Fulford-by-the-Sea and was quietly dissolved later in the year, leaving only the Fulford Monument, once planned to be one of five identical fountains, to bear witness to the once-lofty goals it represented. But the inhabitants of Fulford-by-the-Sea, many of them children and grandchildren of the area’s first settlers, refused to give up their homes without a fight. When the Florida Finance Company folded, the residents met on the historic night of October 4 th , 1926, to discuss officially organizing themselves, and the Town of Fulford was born. The next year in 1927, the Town was reincorporated as the City of Fulford, and thanks to the tireless efforts of its dedicated residents and champions, it was renamed to become the city of North Miami Beach in 1931, cementing its place in greater Miami history.
The Boom was over, but NMB continued to flourish. Local developer Lafayette Allen, known to all in his community as Lafe, had long had a dream for the city, and after selling much of the land to the Florida Finance Company had required them to follow his plan for the “perfect city,” using his street layouts and lot sizes for their building projects. With the company gone, Allen regained ownership of most of the city’s land and began to sell it for bargain prices as low as $395 per lot, allowing local residents and business owners to keep their homes and livelihoods without fear of them being seized by the Company’s creditors.
Allen’s contributions to the city, where he lived the rest of his life, operating a gas station and garage well into the 1940s, were enormous, and the city’s public library, Lafe Allen Memorial Library, is named in his honor to commemorate his work. Similarly important was his daughter, Lenore Hanford, who after her father’s death in 1953 inherited ownership of almost all streets and alleys in the city, which due to the Florida Finance Company’s bankruptcy had not reverted to the city itself; she donated the city’s own streets back to it, ensuring that it could become a fully operating and thriving community, and Hanford Boulevard, one of NMB’s most important thoroughfares, is today named in her honor.
Development was widespread and rapid even in the wake of the storm, with many early city founders becoming its first political leaders. Daniel Diefenbach, a local fisherman and developer, opened Blue Marlin Fisheries in 1938 along the Oleta River, and served as the city’s Mayor from 1953-1963 as well as its City Manager from 1969-1974, not only providing important business support and resources to the area but taking up the mantle of dedicating his work to the city itself as well. Harry Lapham, one of the original pioneers in the area as well as once of the very first City Council members in 1926, continued to work in the area as well, opening the city’s first general store and continuing on to serve his own stint as Mayor in the years to come.
The 1950s and 1960s saw continued improvement in the community’s organization and quality of life, with a new water plant constructed in the 1950s, new power plants created to serve the burgeoning community’s needs, and the addition of the Eastern Shores neighborhood, which was designed and built in the late 1950s to add even more beautiful waterfront to an already richly blessed city. While Sunny Isles Beach eventually split off to become its own city in the late 1980s, it was originally part of North Miami Beach, and its famous fishing pier was a vibrant sporting and leisure center for the city. 1968 saw the opening of the community center in Washington Park, the city’s historical Black neighborhood, and marked ongoing efforts to integrate the city and its institutions as well as providing support for citizens from all backgrounds.
Modern-day North Miami Beach is both a thriving community and a beautiful place to visit, sporting gorgeous natural attractions as well as unique pieces of South Florida history. The Oleta River, once called Snake Creek by the early settlers, winds through the city, providing fishing, boating, and opportunities for quiet contemplation of the wide variety of wildlife it attracts. NMB’s parks, which dot the landscape with much enjoyed green space for activities, sports, and general enjoyment, are scattered throughout the city in various neighborhoods and business areas, and host such important recreation as the Oleta State Park waterways, the Greynolds Park golf course, and the Snake Creek walking trail.
Of particular note in the city’s rich trove of historical treasures are the fort, often affectionately referred to by locals as “the Castle,” built in Greynolds Park in the early 1930s, a limestone edifice atop a hill that has the distinction of being the highest ground in south Florida, and the Monastery of St. Bernard de Clairvaux , a twelfth-century Spanish religious complex. Often referred to just as “the Spanish monastery” by NMB citizens, it was built in 1141 in Sacramenia, Spain, where it stood for over seven hundred years before being purchased by American newspaper pioneer William Randolph Hearst in 1925. Over the next thirty years, the monastery was disassembled and painstakingly shipped piece by piece to the United States, where it remained in storage until 1964 when it was reassembled and dedicated to the Bishop of Florida. The Monastery, with its ancient stone walls, contemplative gardens, and beautiful statuary, is both a preserved moment of history in the community as well as a living religious institution with a regular congregation. Life in North Miami Beach has never been more vibrant, with over twenty schools for everyone from preschoolers to college students throughout the city; Fulford Elementary School, founded in 1925 to educate children of the earliest citizens of the area, recently celebrated its own centennial as it continues its mission to educate the next generations on the same land where Captain Fulford first made his homestead. The city also boasts over twenty churches, including the Fulford United Methodist Church, founded by the earliest settlers in the 1890s and still a living faith community today, and two synagogues serving the city’s robust Jewish population. The city operates its own municipal library, independent of the greater Miami-Dade County system, which along with the city’s many community centers, swimming pools, youth centers, tennis complex, and afterschool programs provides education and entertainment to residents of all ages.
The city is one of the most diverse in the area, with sizable populations of many different cultures and religions, including a strong traditional Jewish population, the fourth highest percentage of Haitian residents in the country, and rich Chinese, Colombian, Cuban, and Peruvian populations, among others. The bustling marketplace of Asian-owned businesses along the city’s 167th and 163rd Streets has led to the area being named the unofficial Chinatown of Miami. Every culture brings unique perspectives, celebrations, and gifts to the community, resulting in a dynamic and vital city with residents from all over the world and all walks of life.
With endless small businesses, new residents and neighbors, and living interactions with art and nature, North Miami Beach has continued from its roots as a swamp pioneer town to become an ever-growing, ever-changing mosaic of culture, business, and activity. As the city celebrates its centennial, its sights continue to be set ever onward and upward, seeking to continue its mission to be a wonderful place to live, work, play, and change the world.