City of Belle Glade, Palm Beach County, Florida, USA

Belle Glade is a city in Palm Beach County, Florida, United States on the southeastern shore of Lake Okeechobee. According to the U.S Census estimates of 2011, the city had a population of 17,667.

Belle Glade (and the surrounding area) is sometimes referred to as "Muck City" due to the large quantity of muck, in which sugarcane grows, found in the area. Despite being located in the South Florida region of the state, Belle Glade is culturally more associated with the Florida Heartland.

For a time during the early to mid 1980s, the city had the highest rate of AIDS infection per capita (37 cases in a population of roughly 19,000) in the United States. According to the FBI, in 2003, the city had the second highest violent crime rate in the country at 298 per 10,000 residents. "In 2010, the Palm Beach County sheriff’s office estimated that half of the young men in Belle Glade between the ages of 18 and 25 had felony convictions. The town's migrant quarter resembles something on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, or Kampala in Uganda[citation needed]. Some families have recently resorted to catching rainwater to survive because their utilities have been cut off for nonpayment.

The existence of Belle Glade is related to the federal project of draining the land around Lake Okeechobee, the acreage to be used for agriculture. The town was built in 1925 and destroyed three years later by a hurricane which killed thousands of people. The town was subsequently rebuilt. The area around Lake Okeechobee is fertile and farming has been an important industry.

Many migrant farmworkers from Belle Glade appeared in the 1960 television documentary, Harvest of Shame.

Men and women still gather around 5 a.m. in the same lot you see at the beginning of Harvest of Shame, waiting for buses to take them to the fields. The "loading ramp," as it's called, is a bleak, empty lot, surrounded by some small buildings with bars on the windows and a boarded up storefront.

As of May 2014 the city has plans "to demolish the loading ramp and turn it into a park."

The town is known for its football tradition, and together with nearby Pahokee has "sent at least 60 players to the National Football League"

Credit for the data above is given to the following website:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_Glade,_Florida-01-010-0200-001.0

Taken in: United States / Florida / Belle Glade (show map)

Taken on: January 13, 2019

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