Cárdenas was founded on 8 March 1828, with the help of several old aristocratic Spanish-Cuban families from the nearby provincial capital of
Matanzas and in 1861 already had 12,910 inhabitants. The completion of the
railroad in 1841 led to further development. Cárdenas was one of the first cities in Cuba to have electric service, public transportation (trams), telegraph and telephone. The city was not laid out in the traditional central-plaza Spanish custom, but rather, inspired on a North American perpendicular grid pattern, modeled on the city of
Charleston, South Carolina, with the help of American (Confederate) landscape engineers. Another notable link between the city and South Carolina was Cárdenas native,
Ambrosio José Gonzales, who would spend several years residing there and married Harriet Elliot, daughter of prominent South Carolina planter and state Sen.
William Elliot, in 1856, living 24 miles from Charleston. According to historian Antonio Rafael de la Cova, Gonzales would join the Confederate forces and was nominated for the rank of general six times but was unsuccessful due to a personal feud with
Jefferson Davis. In 1850, the
Venezuelan General
Narciso López, along with some Americans and Cuban exiles (including
Gonzales), landed here on a filibustering expedition, and held the town for a few hours, abandoning it when he saw that the people would not rise to support him in his efforts to secure Cuban independence. and had received a great influx of European immigrants, including from
Ireland,
France,
Italy and
Corsica - many Cárdenas families were known for having foreign-sounding surnames, such as Jones, Larrieu, Smith, Villa-Giorgi and Sterling, among others. By 1907 the population was 24,280. The shallowness of the harbour required loads to be lightened and repeated loading of cargoes. After the
1933 Cuba–Brownsville hurricane hit the city badly,
José Arechabala S.A. financed the
dredging of the harbour and the reform of the whole coastline, including the construction of the
Monumento a la Bandera (monument to the national Cuban flag). This justified the Arechabala appointment as
Benefactora eminente of Cárdenas. The surrounding region is farmed for its fertility. ==Demographics==