Multicultural and ever changing, Miami is one of America's most exciting cities. Originally named after Native American tribe the Mayaimi, that lived near Lake Okeechobee, it has changed beyond recognition throughout the years. Huge immigration, hurricane damage, investment and tourism have all had a huge effect on how the ‘Magic City’ has developed. Today, Miami is known for its beaches, cruise port, skyscrapers, friendly neighbourhoods and warm weather.
Read on to see some incredible photos of how Miami has changed through time...
Wealthy Ohio widow Julia Tuttle settled in southern Florida in 1891. Believing Miami would one day become a great city and the gateway to the Americas, she bought a sizeable citrus plantation on the north side of the river and attempted to convince railroad magnet Henry Flagler to extend his train there.
To this day, Miami is the only US city to essentially be founded by a woman. This image, from a display inside the HistoryMiami Museum, is a reproduction of two photographs of the ‘Mother of Miami’ Tuttle and Flagler.
Motivated by a vision of Miami's future potential, Henry Flagler completed a railroad to link Miami to northern Florida and the East Coast of the United States. This image shows the Florida East Coast Railway arriving in Miami, marking the beginning of the fabulous growth of the city and of other resort communities nearby.
The first train arrived in Miami on 15 April 1896, and a few months later, on 28 July, the then sleepy fishing village was incorporated as a city. Immigrants from the Bahamas formed a large part of the labour force at the time, whether they were building the railroad or harvesting vegetables.
Miami grew quickly in the early 20th century with residents and tourists attracted to its favourable location and climate. John Collins, an old Quaker from New Jersey, and Carl Fisher, an entrepreneur born in Indiana, became advocates for residing in the city and made the Miami Beach region into one of the most popular travel destinations in the nation.
Collins constructed hotels, while Fisher built stores, bars and the Dixie Highway to guarantee a continual influx of tourists. Meanwhile, businessmen the Lummus Brothers established the Ocean Beach Realty Company, which envisioned a city fronting the ocean made up of modest single families. This image shows a desolate South Beach before it was built on.
The following years saw a lot of major infrastructure created around Miami Beach, which became a town on 26 March 1915, and grew to become a city in 1917. An airport was established near Miami in 1912, the Collins Bridge to Miami Beach was constructed a year later, and the Seybold Canal Bridge over the Wagner Creek was built in 1919. This picture shows Miami Beach, including the Nautilus Hotel and grounds.
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At the start of the 1920s, the tropical paradise of Miami prospered and became one of America’s great winter vacation resorts. The building of industrialist James Deering’s Villa Vizcaya estate between 1914 and 1922 also grew the economy, with 10% of Miami’s population employed by the project.
Neighbourhoods like Coral Gables quickly developed and Miami’s size expanded by nearly three times. Here is another aerial view of Miami and Miami Beach as development takes shape.
In September 1926, Miami’s population boom came to a halt when the city was hit by a severe hurricane. The Great Miami Hurricane remains one of the deadliest natural disasters in US history, and caused widespread devastation and loss of life.
It also represented an early start to the Great Depression in the state of Florida. This postcard shows a sunken ship washed up against the Venetian Causeway on 18 September 1926.
Chicago mobster Al Capone, who ruled an empire of crime in the Windy City in the 1920s, set his sights on Florida in 1927. He initially rented a mansion, under an assumed name, on Indian Creek, a 300-acre island in Biscayne Bay, for his wife Mae and son Sonny, as well as a penthouse suite in a Miami hotel.
He later chose Miami Beach Mayor Newton Lummus Jr as his real estate agent to find a permanent home, and bought a villa at 93 Palm Avenue on Palm Island in 1928.
On New Year’s Day 1935, the first NCAA-recognised Orange Bowl college football game took place between the Bucknell Bison and Miami Hurricanes at Miami Field. Around 5,000 fans watched the match, and saw the Bucknell team overpower their southern adversaries, winning 26-0.
The annual match was played at Miami Field from 1935 to 1937, before it was relocated to the Miami Orange Bowl stadium from 1938 to 1996. Nowadays it is staged at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens every January.
When America entered the war, parts of Dade County became training bases for the armed services. The Port of Miami, located on the site of today’s Maurice Ferre Park, became the preserve of the Navy as well as a Submarine Chaser Training School, known affectionately as the ‘Donald Duck Navy’.
This image shows United States Navy Northrop BT-1, single-engine monoplane dive bombers of Naval Air Operational Training Command (NAOTC) on a training flight over Miami in October 1941. After the war, many members of the armed services returned as permanent citizens and holidaymakers, revitalising the city’s population once again.
The 38-acre Miami Seaquarium, located on the island of Virginia Key in Biscayne Bay, is the oldest oceanarium in the United States. It opened its doors on 24 September 1955, and from 1963 to 1967, the TV series Flipper was filmed at the Miami Seaquarium, which now hosts over half a million visitors annually.
However, it has also been the epicentre of controversy, protests and lawsuits, with its past and current owners accused of animal neglect.
Before the 1960s, Miami's population consisted largely of southern migrants and their descendants. However, the arrival of Cuban immigrants and other issues in Latin American economies shifted Miami's economy from one mainly based on tourism, to one that prioritised providing financial services. As a result, Miami surpassed New Orleans as the United States' principal trade outlet with Latin America.
During the 1960s, Miami experienced a significant boom in development, as the city attracted visitors from around the world and became known for its vibrant nightlife, beautiful beaches and diverse cultural scene.
In the 15 years following the Cuban Revolution (1953-59), it is estimated that around 500,000 Cubans fled to Miami. Here, we see Cuban refugees arriving at the Opa Locka compound in 1962, where they would go through immigration, health and settlement routines, and register for jobs.
Cuban exiles also began to arrive in the city via US-sponsored Freedom Flights, which ran twice daily from 1965 to 1973, and changed the ethnic makeup of Miami.
The city’s convenient proximity to the Bahamas and the Caribbean made leisure cruising a no-brainer of a business idea. But, from the outset, Miami wasn’t a practical cruise port. So, during the 1960s, Miami’s seaport underwent a major transformation, with the opening of the terminals on Dodge Island in 1968 and the arrival of some of the first modern cruise ships.
As a result, the Magic City secured its status as the ‘Cruise Capital of the World’.
The Miami Dolphins football franchise was founded by attorney and politician Joe Robbie, and Danny Thomas, an actor and comedian in 1966. Here, we see them in action against the Buffalo Bills in November that same year.
The Dolphins remain the only NFL team to complete an entire season undefeated, as they finished the 1972 campaign 17-0, and won Super Bowl VII against the Washington Redskins. Their head coach at the time, Don Shula, is still the most successful in professional football history in terms of total games won (347).
A group of Black organisations in Miami called for ‘a mass rally of concerned Black people’ to take place on 7 August 1968, at the Vote Power building in Liberty City (a Black neighbourhood). Gun battles, fire bombings and lootings broke out just across the bay from Miami Beach where Republicans were holding their 1968 National Convention.
The Florida National Guard was called in, and a dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed, with order eventually restored. The city also saw race riots in 1980 and 1989.
During the 1980s, Miami gained a reputation as a centre of the illegal drugs trade. This image shows actor Al Pacino in the 1983 film Scarface, which tells the story of Cuban refugee Tony Montana, who arrives penniless in Miami and becomes a powerful drug lord.
During the 1970s and 80s, Colombian Pablo Escobar and the Medellín Cartel established trafficking routes into the US through Miami, superseding the ‘Cuban mafia’, which had previously controlled smuggling in Florida.
Running on NBC from 1984 to 1989, iconic TV show Miami Vice followed James ‘Sonny’ Crockett (Don Johnson) and Ricardo Tubbs (Philip Michael Thomas), two undercover Miami PD detectives, as they foiled shady arms sales and took down drug dealers on the streets of Miami.
Director Michael Mann revisited the series and released a film reboot in 2006, with Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx in the leading roles.
On 11 September 1987, Pope John Paul II led a public Mass in Tamiami Park for 230,000 believers during the first and only Papal visit to South Florida. Heavy rainfall soaked the crowd and lightning strikes eventually cut the service short, sending John Paul II and many worshippers to seek shelter.
During his visit, the Pope met with representatives of the nation's priests, members of the US Jewish community, and President Ronald Reagan. Three years later, in June 1990, Nelson Mandela addressed a crowd of 6,000 at the Miami Beach Convention Center.
On 24 August 1992, Hurricane Andrew, the third most-intense hurricane to strike the United States at the time, caused some 50+ deaths and considerable property damage in South Miami-Dade County. Although much of the metropolitan area was largely spared, the storm destroyed over 25,000 homes, leaving more than 160,000 residents homeless, and reshaping communities, including at the trailer park shown in this image.
The multipurpose American Airlines Arena on Biscayne Bay opened on New Year’s Eve, 1999, at a cost of $213 million (£166m). Cuban-American pop singer Gloria Estefan performed at the arena's grand opening, and days later, NBA team Miami Heat played their first game in their new home, defeating the Orlando Magic 111-103.
It has since been renamed the FTX Arena and is now known as the Kaseya Center. In October 2024, it was announced that the court would be dedicated to longtime coach Pat Riley, who led the Heat to three NBA championships.
Another devastating storm hit Miami on 24 October 2005, as Hurricane Wilma made landfall. As with its predecessors, the storm left a lasting impact on the city and its infrastructure, with 30 deaths occurring in Florida, as well as power outages and approximately $19 billion (£15bn) of damage. This image shows blown over trees and street signs following the passage of Wilma, and the effects of the storm did lead to improvements in disaster preparation and response.
A bronze statue of Julia Tuttle stands in Bayfront Park, and was unveiled on 28 July 2010, the city’s 114th birthday. The statue depicts Tuttle looking to the horizon, to the future. She is holding a basket of oranges in one hand and orange blossom on the other, references to the proof she gave Flagler in 1891 that crops could survive southern Florida’s tropical climate, in what was just a swampland at the time.
This image shows workers preparing the cutter head of the Port Tunnel Boring Machine for attachment to the tunnelling machine. The $45 million (£35m) machine was longer than a football field and about as tall as a four-storey building, and it carved the twin tunnels connecting Watson Island and Dodge Island.
The $1 billion (£780m) Port of Miami Tunnel, which travels beneath Biscayne Bay, connecting the MacArthur Causeway with PortMiami, was completed in May 2014 and officially opened to commercial and private traffic in August that year.
Today, Miami is a thriving metropolis known for its diverse population, booming real-estate market and vibrant cultural scene. The city continues to attract residents and visitors from around the world, making it a global hub for business and leisure. The downtown skyline of Miami has a contemporary look, with gleaming glass-walled skyscrapers accented with neon lighting at night.
The city’s close relationship to Latin America is especially well represented in its ethnic neighbourhoods, with more than 70% of the population Hispanic/Latino.
The city is home to several professional sports teams, including the Miami Marlins (baseball), Miami Dolphins (football) and Miami Heat (basketball). The Miami metropolitan area has many institutions of higher education, including the University of Miami in Coral Gables.
While Miami International Airport is a major travel hub and handles cargo going mostly to Latin America and the Caribbean, PortMiami is the busiest cruise/passenger port in the world, accommodating major cruise lines such as Virgin Voyages, Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian and MSC.