A Miami Beach Chronology

The bridge that Collins build might have been the longest, but it couldn't outlast progress, and on February 28, the Venetian Causeway took its stead, boasting a roadway made of concrete and steel, ten fixed bridges and two draw bridges, connecting the Venetian Islands, as well as Miami Beach to the mainland.

Related to the Calusa, the principal tribe of southwestern Florida, the Tequesta inhabited Miami Beach. A 1935 excavation of a burial mound at 96th Street would offer a glimpse into the home life of these first settlers.

Having first made landfall at today’s St. Augustine on April 2, Spanish Explorer Juan Ponce de León claimed the peninsula he named La Florida, in honor of Pascua Florida, the Spanish Feast of Flowers during Easter. Reportedly on a quest to find the “Fountain of Youth,” Ponce de León, governor of Puerto Rico at the time, along with two hundred men in three ships, set sail on March 4, heading north towards a landmass referred to as Biminy, when they spotted “an island” unfamiliar to them. The conquistador and crew did not initially establish settlement, choosing instead to make intermittent forays on land as they sailed around the southern tip of the peninsula. De León would eventually return to colonize in 1521, but succumbed to injuries suffered when his group was attacked by native tribes. Today, according to a 2007 Florida Senate Statute, at the governor’s discretion, April 2 may be designated a “state” day, with the week of March 27 to April 2 as “Pascua Florida Week.”

Captain Alonzo Alvarez de Pineda, a Spanish explorer and cartographer, was in the employ of the Spanish Governor of Jamaica, when in March 1519, he led a fleet of four ships and a crew of 270 men from Jamaica, in search of a direct route to the East Indies. Exploring the coast along the Gulf of Mexico, between Florida and Mexico, Pineda had hoped to find a strait to the Pacific Ocean. The first Europeans to lay eyes on the Mississippi River and the territory of Texas, they claimed the find for Spain. But perhaps just as important a discovery, was that Florida, long thought to be an island, proved to be a peninsula. Captain Alonzo Alvarez de Pineda was killed in a1520 Haustec uprising in Mexico.

The Tequesta moved to the mainland, present site of the City of Miami.

The Seminoles arrived in Florida.

The French and Indian War, also knowns as the Seven Years' War, between Great Britain and France, ended with the Treaty of Paris of 1763, with France relinquishing all its territories, including Florida, in mainland North America. With the British scored critical overseas victories against France, including conquering French Canada as well as French colonies in the Caribbean, French King Louis XV, in March 1762, issued a formal call for peace. But with news of the British capturing Havana, including the Spanish colony of Cuba, Spanish King Charles III had refused a treaty that would require Spain to cede Cuba. Meanwhile the British Parliament refused to ratify a treaty that failed to reflect territorial gains made during the war. After ardent negotiations, the Treaty of Paris was ratified, becoming effective on February 10, 1763. Signors included Great Britain, whose parliament had overwhelmingly favored the terms (319-64) and Hanover on one side, Spain and France on the other, and Portugal “expressly understood to be included.” The Treaty restored most of the conquered territories to their original owners, with Britain allowed to keep most of its spoils, though it did, for example, return Havana to Spain. The Treaty also had the British resolving to defend Catholicism.

Eighty Tequesta families were transported to Havana, losing their identity as a race to the native population of Cuba.

Though it was the Spanish who named Florida in 1513, the 1783 Treaty of Paris gave the British control, ending two centuries of Spanish rule. The British divided the area, creating the colonies of East Florida and West Florida, not counted among the original thirteen. Both Florida colonies had remained loyal to the British during the Revolutionary War.

Following the Revolutionary War, Spain had regained control of Florida from Britain as part of the Treaty of Paris of 1783. When the British left the area, Spanish colonists as well as settlers from the newly formed United States flocked Florida, many of the new residents lured by favorable Spanish land grants which paved the way for land ownership. The Seminoles were encouraged to set up farms, providing a buffer between Spanish Florida and the US. Even slaves desperate to escape their owners’ reach found refuge in Florida, though that agitated the US government. Steered by General Andrew Jackson, US military forces invaded the area, scattering the villagers, burning their towns and seizing Spanish-held Pensacola and St. Marks, resulting in the First Seminole War that would end in 1818.

The Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819, also known as the Transcontinental Treaty or the Purchase of Florida Treaty, has been said to represent “perhaps the greatest victory ever won by a single man in the diplomatic history of the United States.” Though negotiations over Florida had begun with the 1815 mission of Spain’s Don Luis de Onís to Washington, resolution would materialize when President James Monroe appointed John Qunicy Adams Secretary of State. In response to Adams’ demand for control over the inhabitants of East Florida or its cessation to the United States, Onis agreed that Spain would not only surrender the colony but would also renounce all claims to West Florida. The Treaty also defined the western limits of the Louisiana Purchase with Spain surrendering its claims to the Pacific Northwest. The US, in return, recognized Spanish sovereignty over Texas. Spain received no compensation though the US agreed to assume liability for $5 million in damage done by American citizens who had rebelled against Spain. Although ratified in 1821, the US could not immediately open the territory to newcomers as private land claims remained unsettled, and the government had to confirm all Spanish land grants issued before January 24, 1818, as in order to secure its remote region in the territory, Spain had offered land donations to anyone loyal to the Spanish Crown.

Pirate Black Caesar and his partner Gasparilla were killed in an ambush by the US Navy. The Cocolobo Bay Cay Club still presides over the fallen pirate’s empire. The site of Black Caesar’s original landfall known as Caesar Creek (Elliott Key), is one of the finest fishing grounds in the world today.

With the discovery of gold on Cherokee in the 1820s, Native Americans, especially those in the southeast United States, found themselves fighting to retain possession of their land. Desperate, some sought a sympathetic ear of the newly-elected President Andrew Jackson. But instead, the president, a Tennessean and veteran of the First Seminole War, in 1830, signed the Indian Removal Act, authorizing the resettlement of all Native Americans to lands west of the Mississippi River, dissidence met with force as necessary. While some tribes moved, without reluctance, as they saw the usurping of their land as inevitable, some sought legal remedy. Others, including the Seminoles who broke rank with the so-called "Five Civilized Tribes," and with Osceola emerging as a young leader among the tribe, opted for war. On a resupply mission on December 28, 1835, as Major Francis Dade, for whom Dade County would later be named, was leading 110 troops from Fort Brooke (near Tampa) to Fort King (today’s Ocala), nearly twice as many Seminoles and allies ambushed the men, killing Dade and just about all his battalion. Though three soldiers were initially spared, only one ultimately survived, returning to Fort Brook with tales of what became known as the Dade Massacre, signaling the start of “the most expensive war the white man ever waged against Native Americans—the Second Seminole War. The war ended in 1842, as early as 1837, some 46,000 Native Americans were relocated.

On July 23, John W.B. Thompson, keeper of the Cape Florida Lighthouse at the south end of Key Biscayne, survived a 24-hour Seminole on the facility. Built in 1825, the lighthouse is still operational.

Named after Major Francis L. Dade whose 1837 killing had spawned the Second Seminole War, and with Indian Key as the county seat, Dade County was created by an act of the Territorial Legislative Council.

A post office was opened in Key Biscayne.

After several meetings, delegates from around the state met in Tallahassee to weigh secession as the Civil War intensified, and on January 10, 1861, with a vote of 62 to 7, Florida became the third of 11 states to withdraw from the Union. Arguing against both the incumbent governor Madison Starke Perry and his successor John Milton, the former territorial governor, Richard Keith Call, was less than persuasive, when in a minority opinion as a private citizen, he had argued that secession would bring only ruin to the state. In a public ceremony on the east steps of the capitol the following day, the formal Ordinance of Secession was signed, making Florida a member of the Confederate States of America.

Enacted during the Civil War, the Homestead Act, signed on May 20, was the latest attempt to encourage settlement of ‘unchartered’ frontier lands. The act made provisions for any adult citizen, intended or actual, to receive 160 acres with stipulations that included 1) the recipient had never borne arms against the US government; 2) claimants improve the parcel by building a house and cultivating the land for five years; and 3) after the prescribed five-year period, pay a nominal registration fee in return for a free and clear title. Claimants who preferred not to invest five years, could purchase the land at $1.25 per acre while Civil War veterans would credit for time served as part of the five-year requirement.

With the goal of eventually starting a coconut plantation, Henry B. Lum and his son, Charles, visited Miami Beach.

To rescue victims of boat wreckages, the first five houses of refuge—including the Biscayne House of Refuge at today’s 72nd Street—were built at 26 miles intervals, between 1875 and 1876.

The marriage of Anti-Semitism and poverty in Eastern Europe spawned the great wave of Jewish immigration.

Henry B. Lum partnered with Ezra Osborn and Elnathan T. Field to start a coconut plantation. Lum had already acquired 600 acres (14th Street to Government Cut), and Osborn and Field bought a 65-mile strip, including all of what is now Miami Beach, north of the Lum property to Jupiter.

Henry M. Flagler who was born poor in 1830 in New York State but who would go on reap to millions as a Standard Oil magnate, paid his first visit to Florida at the age of 53.

On November 4, Richard Peacock was the first recoded birth in what became Miami Beach, a year into his father’s five-year tenure as keeper of the Biscayne Bay House of Refuge. During the elder Peacock’s reign, the House of Refuge was an “open house” for all wayfarers.

Henry B. Lum’s son, Charles, built a two-story house.

Captain William H. Fulford became the third keeper of the Biscayne House of Refuge, and following his tenure that ended in 1902, under the Homestead Act, received a 160–acre tract in the area of 163rd Street. The Town of Fulford would later be named for the captain, though in 1931 the town morphed into the City of North Miami Beach.

Henry B. Lum died, bequeathing son Charles his entire estate.

At nearly 60 years old, though John S. Collins had previously visited Florida, he made his first trip to Miami Beach, not entirely for pleasure but to check on his less-than-optimal-performing investment in the Lum coconut farming venture.

Richard “Dick” M. Smith built a two-story wooden pavilion, just north of where Government Cut would be, opening as the Dick Smith Casino.

Judge Frank B. Stoneman, on September 15, reorganized and moved the Orlando Record to Miami, renaming it the Miami Evening Record, though that name wouldn’t last, eventually becoming the Morning News-Records. The 1907 recession would financially devastate the publication, and having secured a loan from Henry Flagler, Frank B. Shutts, founder of the law firm Shutts & Bowen, bought the flailing newspaper, and would, in 1910, rename it the Miami Herald. Perhaps fueled by the land boom of the 1920s, the Miami Herald was the largest newspaper in the world at the height of expansion, though only a few years later, the publication almost folded, near victim the Great Depression.

Government Cut shipping channel opened, creating Fisher Island.

Disappointed with the performance of his investment in the Lum coconut farming venture, John S. Collins purchased Ezra Osborn and Elnathan T. Field’s share of the business.

Having discovered that not only were coconuts trees not native, but that salt water was also detrimental to their survival, as were the incessant attacks from rabbits and other natives, quite the agrarian, John Collins turned instead to avocado, and in 1907, started planting nearly 3,000 trees after buying Ezra Osborn and Elnathan T. Field’s share of the Lum coconut venture.

Dan Hardie became Sheriff of Dade County, ridding the area of the notorious “Rice Gang” which had been robbing, killing and spreading terror.

Avery Smith bought the Dick Smith Casino from then owner Henry Black, and had Charles Lum transfer the land lease to him. (Ownership of building and land were separate at the time.)

Avery Smith and C. Warr formed the Biscayne Navigation Company, running two ferries.

Born January 12, 1874, in Greensburg, Indiana, Carl Fisher first visited Miami with his wife Jane.

Digging of the Collins Canal, allowing for transportation of John Collins’ produce from his farm to the railway station across the bay.

John Collins’ family came to Miami to assess the project viability. Thomas Pancoast, Collins’ son-in-law and partner in the family business (farm machinery, coal, lumber, builders’ and farmers’ supplies) saw Miami Beach as a tenable resort.

Despite Avery Smith’s ardent objections, John Collins obtained approval to erect a bridge across the bay.

John Collins was introduced, by his lawyer, Frank Shutts, to Carl Fisher, who, for bridge bonds as collateral, as well as 200 acres from the Miami Beach Improvement Company’s, (from ocean to bay, between 15th and 19th streets), lent Collins $50,000 to complete the bridge.

The Lummus, brothers John and James, along with Avery Smith, formed the Ocean Beach Realty Company, purchasing 600 acres, most of it from Charles Lum (from 14th Street to Government Cut). Biscayne Street (today’s South Pointe Drive) was laid out along the north side of Smith’s strip of land, and the numbered streets started a block farther north. In keeping with the South’s tradition of not restricting the Jewish community, the original Lummus development had no restrictions against Jews, as was customary elsewhere in the country, though restrictions against African-Americans were still in effect.

The Collins-Pancoast family formed the Miami Beach Improvement Company on June 2.

The Ocean Beach Realty Company began platting in July, selling the Ocean Beach Subdivision located at Biscayne Street (today’s South Pointe Drive) north to Fifth Street; and east to west, from Ocean Drive to what would become Washington Avenue.

Seventy-four-year-old farmer and pioneer, John S. Collins, witnessed the November opening of the Collins Canal he created to transport his avocado crops across Miami Beach.

In exchange for 100 acres at the northern end of the Lummus parcel, Carl Fisher lent John N. Lummus $150,000.

Miami Beach Improvement Company bullheaded and dredged Lake Pancoast, removing an island in Indian Creek.

On the advice of his doctors and having borrowed $50 from his life insurance policy, Hungarian-born Joe Weiss left his wife and young son in New York for the more asthma-friendly Miami weather. Becoming the first Jewish family to permanently call Miami Beach home, and with his background as a waiter, Joe started operating a lunch stand at Smith’s bathing casino, sowing the seeds for what would become the iconic Miami Beach staple—Joe’s Stone Crab. But ironically, what became his signature almost didn’t happen, as it was not until a researcher at Allison’s aquarium alerted the proprietor to the intricacies of preparing the delicacy. Boiling, it turned out, removed the excess iodine from the crustacean, improving the taste. By then, his wife Jennie and son Jessie had joined Joe, and with Jennie waiting tables and Joe himself cooking, Joe’s Restaurant opened in 1913. By 1921, because of the popularity of the stone crabs, the restaurant became Joe’s Stone Crab, attracting the biggest names of the day—from Al Capone to Amelia Earhart to Gloria Swanson & Joseph Kennedy to J. Edgar Hoover. Today, Joe’s Stone Crab remains a must-do for the discerning—local or visiting.

To help the “speeding up” of development of Miami Beach, E.E. “Doc” Dammers was hired to conduct the first public beach auction on February 19, attracting the curious, the speculator, the bargain seeker. Held over multiple days, throngs, lured by the promise of gifts that included “free dishes, sets of china, crockery, glassware to anyone who showed up,” attended the auction, making the it a resounding success that would be replicated not only in South Florida but across the country. As would be later recounted, “To see “Doc” Dammers in action after the boats had brought the crowd to Miami Beach was worth the money. He would size up the people, and after giving them a real sales-talk on the future possibilities of this “Ocean Heaven for the Sun Seekers,” he would reach for the hat and draw out a number. As each passenger on every boat had a number, someone drew something.”

Dade County’s Sheriff Dan Hardie opened a rival bathhouse and restaurant, a block north of Smith’s.