1674-13 John CollinsThe Miami News
Feature
Saturday, June 11, 1983 •
Miami: The way we were
Collinsohn
a Beach
• 107th in a,series on early Miami. patrjarcRDHOWAK
LEINBERG
Editor of The Miami Newt
The story goes that when Henry Lum
of New Jersey first reached what now is
Miami Beach by boat from Key West in
the 1870s, there were but three coconut
trees growing on the strip of land. It was
then that Lum got his idea to replant the
mangrove -covered soil with coconut trees
for the purpose of commercial enterprise.
Before any trees were planted, two
other men — Ezra Osborn and Elnathan
- T. Field, also from New Jersey — visited
here, liked Lum's idea and got involved.
Hundreds of thousands of coconuts were
shipped from Trinidad and planted. Back
in New Jersey, another man got financially
involved. His name was John S. Collins.
AV' hen it became evident that rats and
other wildlife were destroying the small
coconut shoots, the project began to
come apart. It wasn't until just before
Flagler's railroad reached Miami in 1896
that Collins actually came here to see
what was happening to his money. Despite
the coconut disaster, Collins saw some
prospect in the beach and bought out his
partners, at one time owning all the
oceanfront between Jupiter and Norris Cut
above Virginia Key.
Collins decided the beach area oppo-
site Miami would be good for growing av-
ocados. He also became convinced that
some day the land would become valuable
for residences but there was no way to get
there other than by boat.
Collins set out to connect Miami with
the beach. He proposed to build a bridge,
but was met with opposition from the
county commission because a ferry serv-
ice already was serving the beach from
Miami. To prove the need for a bridge,
Collins drove his automobile to the dock
and demanded that the ferry take it
across to Miami Beach. Since the ferry
could not accommodate a car, Collins had
made his point and the bridge was ap-
proved.
It opened, with financial help from Carl
Fisher, on June 12, 1913 — and with it,
Ocean Beach, as it was called then, was
directly linked to the growing city to the
west.
Truly, Collins was a patriarch of Miami
Beach.
He lived to see a great tourist and res-
idential center grow up on the land that
had failed his coconut trees. Collins died
in 1928 at the age of 91.
• NEXT SATURDAY: Scarface and
Miami.
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