We Live Here! Florida Community Studies Consortium

South Florida's Homestead Country was a wild place at the turn of the century. Within a few years Henry Flagler's FEC railroad came south and Homestead gained a railroad station. Incorporated as a city in 1913, it became home to thousands of residents in the coming decades. They came from up north, the Carribean and Latin America among other places. Migrant labor tilled its fields, two national parks were created adjacent to it, and natural disasters, notably Hurricane Andrew in 1992, devastated the area. Surrounding communities of South Dade include Florida City, the Redland, Cutler Bay and Key Largo - all providing a rich playground and work place under the strong Florida sun. In this new century, the area is in the midst of a dramatic building boom that is testing notions of growth management and the areas sustainability.