In 1985, Dr. Cooper Kirk noted some of the factors that led to the formation of Broward County:

According to legend, Broward County, created in 1915, owes its corporate existence to the threat of the area's citizens to become either "wet" or "dry" with regard to the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages. While interesting, such legends fail to gauge the canons of convenience and local self-determination inherent in Americans. In reality, county-seats, as centers of government and commerce, were hubs from which important matters were initiated and resolved.

[The Town of] Davie . . . became a proponent of local self-government because of the distance and inadequate transportation to Miami, the county-seat of Dade County. It was easier to travel by boat to Fort Lauderdale , the anticipated seat of the new county. Fort Lauderdale residents, a fierce and proud genre, raised their hackles at the very mention of Miami. They did not want to spend a day or more transacting legal, political and commercial affairs in their rival to the south.

Pompano residents easily figured that eight miles to Fort Lauderdale was better than thirty-four to West Palm Beach, the county-seat of Palm Beach County, in which both Pompano and Deerfield were located. Essential matters conducted nearer to home meant that their procedures were more responsible to local input by the majority who had the most to gain or lose.

(Excerpted from "Foundations of Broward County Waterways" by Cooper Kirk, in Broward Legacy, Winter/Spring, 1985. Paragraph breaks added.)