People live in migrant-worker barracks, barely standing houses, or apartment complexes where signs faded long ago. The nicest residences are studio apartments located over a recently opened police substation. Drying laundry hangs outside many homes, looking like rags that people in other places might not bother washing.
Exteriors are brand-new brick, pastel plaster, and rustic yet unblemished wood siding.
Houses sport cheery flowers, not hanging laundry. These folks can afford clothes dryers. But the fact this crop thrives in the area's nutrient-rich, black loam is what put the city on the map. Her soil is her fortune. Head past Glades General Hospital, a strip mall, a row of fast-food restaurants, city hall, and the local public library, and the highway leads to the site of the future Belle Glade Business Park, where construction began in January.