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Miami - Florida - History |
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The
story of Miami begins more than 10,000 years ago with a settlement of
Palaeo-Indians along the edge of south Biscayne Bay near today’s
Charles Deering Estate. Many millennia later, Tequesta Indians entered the
lush, subtropical area and built settlements stretching from the Florida
Keys to Broward County, with the largest concentrations along the north
bank of the Miami River and on Key Biscayne. Like
Florida’s other native inhabitants, who numbered more than 350,000
at the time of the Spanish Entrada in 1513, the lifestyle of the Tequestas
changed radically, and for the worse, following the Spanish arrival.
Victims of disease, war and other dislocations, the Tequestas, along with
Florida’s other native populations, had virtually vanished 250 years
after the entry of the Spanish. Beginning
in 1565, Spain exercised control over Florida for nearly 250 years.
Spain’s colonization effort is divided into two eras separated by a
twenty-year British interregnum in the late eighteenth century.
In
1821, Spain sold Florida to the United States for five million dollars in
Spanish damage claims against the American government. One year later,
Florida became a territory, marking the beginning of its march toward
statehood. In 1830, Richard Fitzpatrick, a prominent figure in the
politics of Territorial Florida, purchased the Bahamian-held lands on the
Miami River, and established a slave plantation over a portion of them.
Sixty slaves cultivated Fitzpatrick’s land. Fitzpatrick, however,
abandoned his plantation soon after the commencement of the Second
Seminole War The
Second Seminole War,
fought between 1835 and 1842, was the longest, bloodiest Indian war in
American history (The First Seminole War was waged in several parts of
northern Florida in 1818). The conflict erupted following efforts by the
United States to relocate Seminole Indians west of the Mississippi River
in Indian Country (today’s Oklahoma and a portion of Arkansas). The
Seminoles were renegade members of the Creek nation who had left their
ancestral home in Georgia in the previous century for Florida. The
Third Seminole War
(1855-1858) prompted the United States Army to re-establish Fort Dallas on
the English property. Although it was fought on a far smaller scale than
the previous conflict, this final Seminole War further discouraged
settlement in Miami. While
the Indian problem had receded by the latter decades of the nineteenth
century, the site of today’s Miami consisted of only a few families
as late as the 1890s. Dade County, stretching from Indian Key to the
Jupiter Inlet, contained less than 1,000 persons by the beginning of the
century’s last decade. The
first train entered Miami on April 13, 1896. By then a city was arising on
both sides of the Miami River. The heart of the community was a retail
district along Avenue D (today’s Miami Avenue) emerging north of the
river, in an area of piney woods. On
July 28, 1896, 344 registered voters, a sizable percentage of whom were
black laborers, packed into the Lobby, a wood frame building on Avenue D
standing near the Miami River. They voted for the incorporation of the
City of Miami, along with the Flagler slate of candidates. By
then, the trappings and institutions that accompany developing communities
everywhere, such as a newspaper, bank, stores, and churches, had appeared.
What separated Miami from other frontier communities was Henry M.
Flagler’s magnificent Royal Palm Hotel. The "Big Blow"
was the second hurricane to hit South Florida that season. In July 1926 a
small hurricane produced heavy rain and slight wind damage. A long time
resident schooled in hurricanes' potential danger considered July's storm
good practice for inexperienced Miamians. "We have had a beautiful
time with a hurricane apparently made to order for me," he said,
"blowing with just enough energy to put the fear of the Lord into the
scoffers, and very possibly make them see the light." Early
in the 20th century, a few farsighted tycoons, most from the Midwest,
who'd made their fortunes in the burgeoning automobile industry,
separately conceived an idea for a new playground for the leisure class.
Among their most preposterous projects was the dredging of Biscayne Bay to
create a man-made beach paradise offshore the new, elegant, tiny city of
Miami--which itself was created from a mangrove swamp. Miami and its
offshore vacation spot Miami Beach soon became famous as the new home--at
least the new winter home--of the "nice" millionaires (as
opposed to Palm Beach, already established as the home of the
"naughty" millionaires). There were fishing expeditions,
luncheons, teas and tennis at the posh hotels Royal Palm and Halcyon Hall.
There were pageants, pig roasts and balloon fests, and land auctions
resembled three-ring circuses, with giveaways of china and crystal and
gewgaws, all incentives for the rich to buy Miami’s
boisterous 15th birthday celebration in 1911 featured an aerialist soaring
in a Wright Brothers airplane over a Flagler-built golf course. For most
Miamians this event marked their first glimpse of an airplane. The
experience served as a harbinger for the city’s emergence as one of
the nation’s early aviation centers, since Miami’s climate,
level topography, and close proximity to water made it ideally suited for
aviation activity. Soon after the inaugural aerial display, Glenn Curtiss, a famed aviator, arrived and established a flight school. By the time America entered World War I in 1917, Miami and the surrounding area hosted several flying schools, including a facility near the Miami Canal that Curtiss operated for future combat pilots in the Great War.
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During
the Second Spanish Period, which stretched from 1784 to 1821, Spain
liberalized her settlement policies in an effort to develop her colony,
encouraging, in addition to her own countrymen, residents of other lands
and faiths to settle in Florida. In the early 1800s, a few Bahamian
families accepted Spanish land offers along the Miami River and on
Biscayne Bay, and farmed in those lush areas. 
Capone
was accused of bringing gambling to the city, but "with or without
him, South Florida was a hotbed of illegal gambling, prostitution,
corruption and rum-running." City officials had looked the other way
before. The "Miami News" led the campaign to drive Capone out,
but he wouldn't budge. In fact, he decided to make Miami Beach his home,
choosing Clarence Busch's Palm Island estate as his permanent residence
