Miami’s most enduring element is its nickname ” The Magic City , “ which has been part of its history since the first days after the City of Miami was incorporated in July 1896.
Incorporation came immediately after the entry of Henry M. Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway in April 1896. A small community, with only nine people living along the mouth of the Miami River in 1895, Miami was positioned, with the entrance of the railroad and its consequent connection with points to the north, to grow rapidly in one of the most important cities in Florida.
To a reporter for the Miami Daily News, the city’s first newspaper, originally called Miami Metropolis, Blackman explained: “What inspired me to call Miami” the Magic City was “Mr. Flagler’s enthusiasm plus a map of the city. . You see, the time I wrote that sentence, I hadn’t even seen Miami. “
Blackman, in fact, was living in Daytona at the time and working as a journalist when he received a request by letter from Henry Flagler in the late summer of 1896 to write an article about the new city of Miami for The Home Seeker, a Flagler magazine employed to market the railroad magnate’s properties. The map of the city that accompanies the letter “influenced Blackman to see the magical possibilities” of Miami.
Blackman explained, “In reviewing the material, I became so excited about the possibilities of the city bordering the Gulf Stream and facing the wide waters of Biscayne Bay (sic), that I referred to it as’ the Magic City ‘.
That article was printed in “’The Home Seeker…’” (For the record, Birmingham, Alabama already called itself “The Magic City of the South”). Shortly after this article was published, Flagler appointed Blackman as editor of The Home Seeker, a position he held for sixteen years. Information from Community News Papers.
