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Dec 2, 2024 | 
fortlauderdalemagazine.com | John Dolen
It was geographical love-at-first-sight when Melvin Anglin discovered Lauderdale-By-The-Sea. Around here, it’s not hard to discover historic tales about special enclaves within the Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area.
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Oct 22, 2024 | 
sun-sentinel.com | John Dolen
In 2020, after a devastating roof collapse in a pounding rainstorm, Fort Lauderdale’s landmark supperclub seemed finished. For those who had enjoyed its pleasures over the years, the exotic Polynesian dance revues, the gardens and waterfalls, the South Pacific masks and artifacts, the tropical Asian dishes, the world-renowned Tiki Bar – the question was, would the Mai-Kai ever reopen? The answer, years in the making, is yes. The return is scheduled for Nov.
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Aug 29, 2024 | 
fortlauderdalemagazine.com | John Dolen
Through the adversity of centuries past, what drove the Tribe to achieve the prosperity it has today? In last month’s column, we noted a key moment in the growth of our area: Seminole Tony Tommie entered a white school, the first of the Tribe to do so. Before that, it was forbidden – not by the whites but by the Seminoles themselves. And so began a new era for the Native Americans who settled here before white (and Black) settlers. But education alone did not lead to the Tribe’s prosperity today.
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Jul 18, 2024 | 
fortlauderdalemagazine.com | John Dolen
Much of what America had then, we didn’t. Then things started moving. One of the key epochs in our city’s early history occurred from 1915 to 1920. Before then:• There was no road north from Broward County. • There were no bridges to the beaches in Fort Lauderdale, Deerfield, Pompano, Dania or Hallandale, nor to the Davie area, according to historian Stuart McIver. • For the Seminoles, drilling in the Everglades had dried up their canoe trails and their hunting and trapping grounds.
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Jun 27, 2024 | 
fortlauderdalemagazine.com | John Dolen
Bahia Mar’s colorful history includes refuge for shipwrecked sailors, a base for rumrunner-fighting Coast Guard patrols and the “home” of Fort Lauderdale’s famous fictional detective. No less a writer than Stephen King called John D. MacDonald “the great entertainer of our age, and a mesmerizing storyteller.” Kingsley Amis said he was a better writer than Saul Bellow. That’s why MacDonald’s celebrated detective – Travis McGee, featured in a series of novels – looms so large in our history.
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May 9, 2024 | 
fortlauderdalemagazine.com | John Dolen
During the height of segregation in Broward, there were just three Black high schools – and two exceptional principals. At the height of segregation in our region in the 1950s, three Black high schools served all of Broward County: Blanche Ely in Pompano, Crispus Attucks in Hollywood and Dillard High School in our city. Two standout pioneer principals at these schools established strict standards, fought the powers that be for better conditions and united the Black community for support.
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Apr 25, 2024 | 
fortlauderdalemagazine.com | John Dolen
Before the land boom in early Fort Lauderdale, it was all about the tomato. Yes, tomatoes were the stars amid a booming vegetable harvest, bushels by the hundreds of thousands. “The territory around Fort Lauderdale has the world beaten when it comes to growing fine tomatoes,” Miami Metropolis reported in 1905. Farmers also grew potatoes, cabbage, beans and more, all in the rich soil of the high ground between the coastal marshes and the Everglades.
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Mar 28, 2024 | 
fortlauderdalemagazine.com | John Dolen
North Florida had plantations, but what did we have? With the topic of slavery in the news, you might wonder about its history in our city. There was not widespread slavery here for the simple reason that there was not a city. Fort Lauderdale was not incorporated until 1911, almost 50 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. If you’re thinking the city of Plantation was named after slaveholders, you’re incorrect. The land Plantation was built on was swampland until 1902.
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Mar 8, 2024 | 
sun-sentinel.com | John Dolen
Over the past four decades South Floridians have been flocking to SunFest, called “the world’s largest waterfront arts and music celebration.”Can you imagine a 10-day Sunfest? Oh don’t freak out, you who try to navigate downtown West Palm Beach this time each year. And local artists, hold off salivating. It’s not coming. They tried that already. In fact, for the very first one, some 40 years ago in 1983.
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Feb 23, 2024 | 
fortlauderdalemagazine.com | John Dolen
The roots of downtown’s prime riverfront prison. Over the last dozen years or so, we’ve seen towering condo buildings, one after the other, sprouting up downtown along the New River. That means a whole new wave of people wondering, can that eight-story building on prime waterfront property on the south side of the river really be a jail? How did that happen?
