On the eve of Miami Beach’s 100th Birthday, Ocean Drive celebrates the woman who started it all, Julia Tuttle.
A portrait of Julia Tuttle in Miami in the 1890s.
Miami is the only American city that was founded by a woman. And by all accounts, Julia Tuttle, the “Mother of Miami,” was one formidable woman. Tuttle, then the respectable wife of a Cleveland businessman, first visited the Magic City in 1875. In that era, two men from Cleveland ruled a harsh wilderness landscape in South Florida: William B. Brickell, of Brickell Avenue renown, and Tuttle’s father, Ephraim T. Sturtevant.
Eleven years after that initial trip, Tuttle’s husband died; her father passed away shortly thereafter. So with her two children in tow, Tuttle left Ohio and moved to Miami to reinvent herself—like so many others have since done. In 1891, a widow wearing black and a dour expression, she bought more than 600 acres along the north bank of the Miami River—pretty much all of present downtown Miami.
In an effort to develop the town, she convinced Henry Flagler—yet another Cleveland mogul—to bring his East Coast Railway south to the forever-tropical Miami. To lure Flagler and his trains, she sent him symbols of Miami’s eternal warmth—orange blossom sprigs and tropical fruits—and eventually gave him much of her undeveloped land. Flagler’s train reached Miami on April 13, 1896, and he built the Royal Palm Hotel along Biscayne Bay, kick-starting Miami into being. Three months later, on July 28, 1896, Miami’s 344 voters agreed to incorporate the City of Miami; Tuttle was present but, as a woman in that era, not allowed to vote.
Two years on, in 1898, Tuttle died at 49, in debt and bested by Flagler. Miami never had a solid industrial base like more sober American cities, but it has always known how to produce dreams. Julia Tuttle, Miami’s seminal dreamer, is buried at the City of Miami Cemetery on NE Second Avenue, close to her original property and in an area poised for condos that would have surpassed even Flagler’s ambitions. One wonders if Tuttle, a woman who took the long view of life, would be surprised to see modern Miami, a city that defies the imagination of ordinary pioneers.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY STATE ARCHIVES OF FLORIDA, FLORIDA MEMORY