#071 History of Miami Beach 1950's MIAM, I BEACH CHA~ER OF
1700 Washington Avenue
Miami Beach, N~lorida
BRIE~ HISTORY OF MIAMI
.... 1,,1 , , i ~ , ~ ~1 i 1,11 ,
The streamlined beauty and lush tropical glamour of Miami Beach Seems a
strange and fantastic dream concocted from the dense and swampy wilderness of the
island less than a half century ago.
The s.tory of Miami Beach is filled with ~lventure, About' the year l~O0, almost
a hundred years before Columbus met sail for America, an indian town flourished in
the mangrove Jungle that is now Miaui Beach. The town w~s built and occupied, by
members~of the Tequesta tribe, the aboriginal lords of the lower east coast of the
Florida peninsula. They were related in both language and customs to the Calusa,
the principal tribe of southern Florida during the Spanish occupation of the country.
In 1567, Don Pedro Menendoz de Aviles built a Spanish nission here to Christ-
ianize the Indians, establish a port of call for his ships and exploit the area for
the benefit of the Spanish 0town,
In 1850, a handbook of Florid~ described the Miani Beach section as inaccessible
to the ordinary tourist and unopened to the average settler. The island was un-
surveyed and inhabited only by a few of tho r'.~nalning Seminole Indians who had
supplanted the TequeStas and Calusas and visited only by the most enterprising and
adventurous of Hunters and explorers.
Miami Beach was still s waste of palmettos and na~roves in 1870 when Henry B.
Lure of Ohio and his son Charles visited the island° A sand ridge running along the
ocean side was covered by a taz~led nass of sea g~apes. The island was a haven for
rattle snakes, mosquitos, wildcats, raccoons, ~possu~, rabbits and bears, The Ltun~s
seeing a few coconut palms growing along th~ beach began with enthusiasm to plan a
tremendous coconut plantation here, bought a large tract of beach land from the
government at 35 cents an acre and returned north. They than interested Ezra Osborn
and E. T. Field of Middletown, New Jersey, in the venture ~nd the latter, with the
financial backing of some of their local friends, formed, a company of their own,
buying from the government a 65 acre tract of land which included all of what is now
Miami Beach north of the Lure holdings which extended south from ltth Street.
The LumPs Osborn and Field's chartered an ocean going schooner, recruited 25
men from life savings stations along the Jersey coast and, with mules, equipment and
provisions, anchored off the shore of Miami Beach in the winter of 1882. There were
no docking facilities and the entire outfit had to be landed through the surf. The
mules were heaved overboared and the men swam ashore with them. Provisions and
equipment were loaded into lifeboats and taken to tb~ beach, coconuts for planting
were imported from Trinidad, Nicars~Ua ~.nd Cuba and by 1885, over 300,000 had been
placed in the Soil.
Wild rabbits that infested the swaup ate the tender shoots of the young plants
almost as soon as they appeared, above the ground~ Those trees that did live to
maturity bore fz~it, but the yield~ was only a minute percentage of that which had
been anticipated. The small fortune inve~ted in tho venture soon disappeared and
with.it the hopes and interest of its supporters. The first attempt to develop
Miami Beach failed,
John S. Collins, New Jersey merchant and horticulturist, was a member of the
group that had invested in the enterprise. · Mr. Collins ca~e to Mia~i Beach in 1896
to cb~ck on his investment and found, of course, a di~al ~ailure. He.. felt', however,
~eturn o to his business in
~hat the land had unlimited potentialities an~ before ~ .~n~'
New Jersey began dickering for land on the island. After s~vcral years of negot-
iation, Collins bought Osborn~s share of the property ~r~l became Field's partner.
In 1907, Collins and Fields began the tremendous task of clearing ths land of
the massive mangrove roots and scrub palmettos i~ order-to plant a grove of avocados~
TJae embroyonic grove was situated about 1000 fee~ from ~he ocean, was a mile long
'~'~ ~,,+. ~nn ~. w~.. T~ t_h~ ~ummer of 1907,~ almost 3,000 avocado tree~ were.