Miami’s First Newspaper

Inaccessibility and the bloody Seminole wars held the Biscayne Bay population to a handful families for most of the 19th century. Julia Tuttle, a determined widow from Cleveland, changed that in 1891. She bought 640 acres north of the Miami River, the current Downtown, “I envision a great city,” she said in a rare interview for Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway newsletter, “a center of trade for the United State with South America.”

A vision dependent on the railway reaching her adopted home, and persuading Tycoon Henry Flagler was not easy. She thought, if anything softens the heart of a shrewd businessman, it had to be free land. Julia Tuttle offered half her kingdom for the train and platting a new city.

Flagler sent black laborers to clear the wilderness. These laborers not only opened up the place physically, they made possible incorporating as a city, an act that required 300 signatories minimum. The Miami Metropolis reported that 163 of the 343 signatories were registered as “colored.” Florida, Deep South, observed the equal but segregated laws, and relegated the black laborers to Colored Town, behind the cemetery, today’s Overtown.

A Newspaper Is Born

On May 15, a Friday, 1896, three months before the City of Miami was incorporated, the first issue of The Miami Metropolis was published. One question arises: not Miami yet, nor, obviously, a metropolis, why Miami Metropolis? Howard Kleinberg, historian and longtime editor of the Miami News (the Metropolis became Miami News in 1923,) has an answer: “It was Flagler’s idea, and what Flagler wanted, Flagler usually got it.”

The Miami Metropolis passed on to future generations a detailed chronicle of the City’s birth. Here is how it reported the events unfolding at The Lobby, a pool hall, near the river on Avenue D (Miami Ave.):

The meeting for the purpose of incorporating the City of Miami was remarkable in many respects, for the large number of votes polled, for its unruffled harmony and for the expeditious manner in which all business was handled. What other city in the State of Florida ever sprung into existence with a list of 400 registered voters, and at its meeting for the purpose of incorporating polled 344 votes?

That is what we did in Miami, and remember the site of the present city was a tract of wild land less than six months ago, and that the railroad only reached here on April 15th.

Residents wanted the name Flagler for the new City, but the tycoon suggested Miami — sweet water in the Calusa language.

Another important event took place that hot humid Wednesday, July 28, 1896, as reported by The Miami Metropolis: Residents elected Miami’s first mayor. Elected was John Reilly, head of the Fort Dallas Land Company, owned by Flagler, the father of Miami. Julia Tuttle, the mother of Miami, was present but couldn’t vote. Women were not allowed to vote in 1896. She did not have a vote, but she certainly had a voice. She willed into law a ban of alcohol in her city, excepting, of course, Flagler’s Royal Palm Hotel. And the rest, as the saying goes, is history!