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Pembroke Pines is a 35-square mile city located in southern Broward County, about 15 miles from downtown Fort Lauderdale and about the same distance from downtown Miami.  It's mostly west of Hollywood, north of Miramar, and generally south of both Davie and Cooper City.  It's a short, but wide city whose western edge touches the Everglades at U.S. 27.

A little history

     Folks looking for more elbow room discovered these miles of quiet fields in the mid-fifties, and began settling in what was then the distant country side of the seaside city of Hollywood.  In this once-remote area, new residents were able to spread out on larger parcels of land and build custom homes without prescribing to convention or following a path laid by developers.  (To this day, lots of horses out west.)

    The city was incorporated in 1960 with only 1,429 residents, but by the the late 90's, it had earned the title of Florida's fastest growing city at least once.  Today, more than 135,000 people call it "home".  Often referred to locally as "The Pines,"  the city has about 52,000 households of every style and price.   They're so spread out that it takes five U.S. post offices to serve the residents.

    Sprawling residential communities sprang up out of what were once were cow pastures, farms, and next-to-the-Everglades swamps.  Bounded on the east by the Florida Turnpike, city growth has exploded in the 90's, initially fueled by Hurricane Andrew in 1992.  The aftermath of that terrifying storm forced thousands of people relocating from their destroyed homes in Miami-Dade county up the major north-south highways, including the new I-75 corridor in the west, to Broward County,