Belle Glade is a city in south-central Florida and it is the in the distance western ration of Palm Beach County, Florida, United States, on the southeastern shore of Lake Okeechobee. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 17,467.

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

For a epoch during the into the future to mid 1980s, the city had the highest rate of AIDS infection per capita (37 cases in a population of on 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.^{[citation needed]} In 2010, the Palm Beach County sheriff’s office estimated that half of the pubescent men in Belle Glade between the ages of 18 and 25 had felony convictions.

The town of Belle Glade was founded during the Florida home boom of the 1920s. During that period, there were a series of efforts made to tally place drainage systems to reclaim teetotal land from the Everglades, including land nearly Lake Okeechobee. It was hoped that the reclaimed acreage could be put to better use, including agriculture. In 1921 the Florida legislature traditional an agricultural research station at Belle Glade to examination methods of growing crops on reclaimed Everglades land. At that time, there were already 16 settlements on and in the region of Lake Okeechobee, inhabited by with hint to 2,000 people.