Deerfield Beach: Named for the Deer Along the River
Near Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Settlement here began in eighteen ninety along the Hillsboro River, at a hamlet called Hillsborough. On June twenty-second, eighteen ninety-eight, a post office opened under the name Deerfield, chosen because deer grazed along the riverbanks. Henry Flagler's Florida East Coast Railway had arrived two years earlier, connecting the tiny community to the outside world and making shipping produce north possible.
The town incorporated as Deerfield in June nineteen twenty-five, then changed its name to Deerfield Beach in nineteen thirty-nine to signal its Atlantic shoreline. Today it is home to a substantial Brazilian-American community and draws surfers to its pier, one of the few fishing and recreation piers remaining on the Broward coast.
