The only major US city founded by a woman
Miami is the only major American city founded by a woman. Julia Tuttle owned land on the north bank of the Miami River and spent years trying to convince railroad magnate Henry Flagler to extend his line south. The story goes that she mailed him orange blossoms after the Great Freeze of 1895 wiped out crops everywhere north of here, proving her point about the climate. The track arrived in 1896 and the city incorporated that July. Miami Beach across the bay was a failed coconut plantation until Carl Fisher dredged the mangroves and sold the sand. The Art Deco district that now defines it was nearly lost to the wrecking ball, saved building by building starting in 1976 by a preservation league Barbara Capitman founded; roughly 800 of those buildings still stand. After 1959, Cuban exiles remade Little Havana, and Calle Ocho remade the city's politics with it.
