It is the county seat of and most populous city in Broward County with a population of , at the census , [ 7 ] making it the tenth-most populous city in Florida. After Miami and Hialeah , Fort Lauderdale is the third-most populous city in the Miami metropolitan area , which had a population of 6,, in Built in and first incorporated in , Fort Lauderdale is named after a series of forts built by the United States during the Second Seminole War. Development of the city did not begin until 50 years after the forts were abandoned at the end of the conflict.
Known as the " Venice of America", Fort Lauderdale has miles of inland waterways across the city. The city is a popular tourist destination with an average year-round temperature of Greater Fort Lauderdale, encompassing all of Broward County , hosted more than 13 million overnight visitors in 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.
For the Tequesta, disease, coupled with continuing conflict with their Calusa neighbors, contributed greatly to their decline over the next two centuries. In the s, there were approximately 70 settlers living along the New River. William Cooley , the local Justice of the Peace , was a farmer and wrecker , who traded with the Seminole Indians.
On January 6, , while Cooley was leading an attempt to salvage a wrecked ship, a band of Seminoles attacked his farm, killing his wife and children, and the children's tutor. The other farms in the settlement were not attacked, but all the white residents in the area abandoned the settlement, fleeing first to the Cape Florida Lighthouse on Key Biscayne , and then to Key West. The first United States stockade named Fort Lauderdale was built in , [ 21 ] and subsequently was a site of fighting during the Second Seminole War.
The fort was abandoned in , after the end of the war, and the area remained virtually unpopulated until the s. It was not until Frank Stranahan arrived in the area in to operate a ferry across the New River, and the Florida East Coast Railroad 's completion of a route through the area in , that any organized development began.
