Miami Downtown Walking Tour (Self Guided), Miami

The coastal sunny city of Miami is a world-class destination for tourists, rich in sights and public venues. The city was off to a humble start on July 28, 1896 with a population of just over 300 people. Miami owes its existence to a woman and is the only major U.S. city founded by a female. Julia Tuttle, "the mother of Miami", was a local citrus grower who originally owned the land the city was built on; she succeeded in convincing railroad tycoon Henry Flagler to extend his Florida East Coast Railway to the region and thus the city was born.

Miami and the eponymous river it stands on derive their name from the Native American tribe that once inhabited the area, Mayaimi. A village of hundreds of people, located at the mouth of the Miami River, predated the arrival of Europeans here by almost 2,000 years. The entire tribe is said to have migrated to Cuba by the mid-1700s.

In the late 19th century, the Miami River neighborhood was seen as a promising wilderness and "one of the finest building sites in Florida". The Great Freeze of 1894–95 hastened Miami's growth, as the crops here were the only ones in Florida that survived. Another crucial role in Miami's early development was African American labor. During the early 20th century, migrants from the Bahamas and African-Americans took up 40% of the local population.

Miami prospered throughout the 1920s thanks to the influx of settlers from up north. However, the collapse of the Florida land boom of the 1920s, the 1926 Miami Hurricane, and the Great Depression in the 1930s slowed its development. During WWII, Miami served as a base for U.S. defense against German submarines and once again enjoyed rapid growth in population, earning the nickname “Magic City” among the winter visitors who remarked that it grew so drastically from one year to the next, as if by magic.

After Fidel Castro took power in Cuba in 1959, many wealthy Cubans fled to Miami, further adding to its increase. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Miami became a major international, financial, and cultural center with many new businesses and cultural amenities.

Being the second-largest U.S. city with a Spanish-speaking majority (after El Paso, Texas), and the largest city with a Cuban-American plurality, Miami is jokingly referred to as the "Capital of Latin America". Another title – the "Cruise Capital of the World" – has been attributed to Miami as the world's busiest port in passenger traffic and cruise lines. In large part for this, Miami is also a major tourist hub and a much loved destination for annual conventions and conferences, receiving more than 16 million visitors per year.

To see some of the most popular tourist destinations in Miami and to explore its heritage, take this self-guided introductory walk.