History

The name Miragoâne comes from Miraguano, the name given by the Taíno people to the Étang de Miragoâne, the second largest lake of Haiti; the town is near the lake.
 The town was founded by English during the 17th century on the coast of a well-protected bay.
The city was reportedly used as a rest stop by pirates long ago.  The area was the meeting point of the Spanish explorers much before the French possessed the western side of Hispaniola.

During a civil war in 1883, the town was destroyed.  The town was later used by Reynolds aluminum to support a plant for refining bauxite from the indigenous soil. Reynolds moved out in the 1982

Geography

The city is on the coast of the Miragoâne Bay, in the Gonâve Channel of the Gulf of Gonâve, about 100 km south of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince. It is sheltered by the Ile Gonave on its north and and by the mountains that surround the area. It is the third largest port in Haiti and one of the greatest natural harbor of the world. It is also the chief town of an arrondissement (a part of a department) with the same name. The arrondissement has four communes (a commune is like a municipality): Miragoâne, Fonds-des-Nègres, Paillant and Petite-Rivière-de-Nippes