Pool Company in Tamarac, FL

In the early 1960s a young developer named Ken Behring came from the Midwest and bought land where he could, creating an active adult community of two-bedroom maintenance-free homes. He called his new city Tamarac, named after the nearby Tamarac Country Club in Oakland Park.

In 1963, Behring built and Jesse Pilch sold the city’s first development east of State Road 7, Tamarac Lakes Section One and Section Two. Next came two neighborhoods of homes built on a former orange grove called Tamarac Lakes North and Tamarac Lakes Boulevard. Four of Behring’s last developments were Tamarac Lakes South, then the Mainlands of Tamarac Lakes just west of State Road 7, and finally the Woodlands community.

The city’s early leaders, hoping to preserve Tamarac as a bedroom community, allowed Fort Lauderdale to annex commercial pockets, forever losing land that might have bolstered the city’s coffers. In the late 1970s, the city de-annexed a long line of commercial buildings from State Road 7 all the way to Northwest 31 Avenue, but it went along with Behring’s vision of Tamarac as a bedroom community. The boundaries were wherever Behring decided to build homes. The city’s current eastern boundaries narrow to a sliver from Northwest 31 to 37 Avenues, then widen to the south. The city’s easternmost boundary extends below Commercial Boulevard to Northwest 16 Avenue. City officials had once considered revising their east city limit lines to ensure efficient delivery of government services.