Waves of History
A Look at Biscayne Bay's Past
Long before luxury yachts and colossal cruise ships cut through Biscayne Bay and skyscrapers dominated the shoreline, small wooden craft sailed the same shallow waters.
Thousands of native peoples lived around the bay, creating settlements and traveling to the Caribbean and beyond, said Greg Bush, a professor of history at the University of Miami.
"A lot of people think of the bay as a thoroughly modern place in the Miami area, but in fact 10,000 years B.C. there were people living in the southern part of Biscayne Bay," he said.
But the bay did not always exist as it does today.
After the sea level rose between 2,400 and 5,000 years ago, the area took on its present form, with barrier islands, sand and mud as well as coastal wetland swamps and marsh deposits.
EARLY SETTLERS
Not much changed until Spanish explorers found the 35-mile-long lagoon in the 16th century. They established a settlement at the mouth of the Miami River in 1566 and another in 1743.
"Both [Spanish settlements] dispersed and died out very quickly because of the relations with native people that were not particularly good, because of weather [and] because of mosquitoes," Bush said. "It was horrifying, I think, for the Spaniards to be here, so they left."
The first permanent European settlers in the Miami area did not come until the early 1800s.
With the new inhabitants came agriculture, something that was unnecessary for the native people due to an abundance of food from the land and water, according to the Historical Society of Southern Florida's Web site.
MODERN CIVILIZATION
While the bay helped provide sustenance for native peoples and settlers, the area remained mostly unaffected by humans until more recent years.
"There are all sorts of stories and descriptions of what life was like on the bay in the 19th century and it must have been an absolutely beautiful place with huge schools of fish, with sailboats plying the waters," Bush said. "There were fresh water springs that would bubble up in the middle of the bay."
Gary Bremen, a park ranger at Biscayne National Park, echoes those descriptions.
"The abundance of all those things was amazing," he said. "[Early settlers] talk about birds flying over and darkening the sky like a cloud passing over, and the fish life was quite abundant as well."
But development has altered the area, particularly after the city of Miami was incorporated in 1892.
"The bay was the central artery for this area up until the railroad came in 1896 and then the first major highway came in 1915, which is Dixie Highway," Bush said. "Therefore, the bay became the commercial center of this area, so you had all sorts of ships coming in and out."
Shipping in the northern bay expanded after Government Cut opened in the summer of 1905. The project involved dredging a shipping lane and cutting out a chunk of Miami Beach to allow access to the port, which was originally located at the mouth of the Miami River.
The resulting land mass south of the cut became Fisher Island.
WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
As modern communities continued growing in and around North Bay, developers looked to South Bay for new projects.
One proposal in the early 1960s called SeaDade, supported by billionaire shipping magnate Daniel K. Ludwig, would have located an oil refinery on the bay.
In addition to the physical structures, Bremen said it would have been necessary to dredge a 40-foot-deep channel through the bay for large ships to access the refinery.
"Anyone who has been out on the bay, knows today that [it] averages about six to eight feet deep, so a 40-foot-deep channel [would have been] an enormous change," he said. Bremen added that the channel would have also required cutting through the coral reef to get to the deep water.
Many locals supported SeaDade because it would have created additional jobs, but a group of early environmentalists thought the costs were too high.
"These were folks who very much had a personal connection to this area - they used this area as their own backyard," said Bremen of the environmentalists, who formed the Safe Progress Association to halt this and a second project called Islandia.
Islandia, supported by land owners, would have connected the northern Florida Keys - from Key Biscayne to Key Largo – with bridges and created new islands using the fill from the SeaDade channel.
Although Ludwig backed out due to the tide of opposition, Bremen said Islandia’s supporters did not give up as easily.
"As it appeared imminent that this would become a national monument back in 1968, in February they bulldozed a highway six-lanes wide right down the center of the island, destroying the forest for seven miles," Bremen said. "Their hope was that, by destroying that area, no one would want it for a national monument."
But, before long, the forest grew back.
"What they officially called Elliott Key Boulevard, but called Spite Highway under their breath, is our one and only hiking trail of any consequence," Bremen said. "It’s not six lanes wide, it’s about six-feet wide and we still call it Spite Highway."
Twelve years after President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill creating Biscayne National Monument, the boundaries were expanded and the area was redesignated a national park.
Protecting a large part of the bay has helped experts to better understand the area and its past. Yet, despite all that is known, much more overall “hidden history” remains to be told, Bush said.
"There are all sorts of stories of individuals, fishermen, tourists, people involved in different kinds of work that have lived here for generations and generations and there's a really, really rich complexion of stories that need to be uncovered."
Fun Fact
Biscayne Bay is named after the Bay of Biscay, a cold, deep body of water by the northern coast of Spain and west coast of France. Some have called this an ironic name since the Floridian body of water is warm and shallow.
