Tropical Park - Miami Beach

  • Address: Miami, Florida, USA
  • Website:www.miamiandbeaches.com
Tropical Park
Miami
Florida, USA

Tropical Park Details

Descriptions from Across the Web

  • Just over one hundred years ago, in 1895, three stubborn visionaries came together to create Miami and, in doing so, open all of then-pristine South Florida to development. The Tuttle and Brickell families possessed land. Henry M. Flagler owned a railroad and possessed the capital to transform the land from a wilderness into a city. The partnership between them was at times adversarial, the consequences sometimes disappointing, but the resulting Magic City would, over the next century, grow into something greater than they could have ever imagined. The Brickell family, consisting of William, his wife Mary, and eight adult children ranging in age from 18 to 38, lived on the south bank of the mouth of the Miami River where they operated a trading post and post office. They arrived in 1871 from Cleveland and purchased a vast stretch of land that extended from the banks of the river south to near today's Coconut Grove. They also owned property on the north side of the New River in today's Fort Lauderdale. (1) Julia Tuttle Julia Tuttle and her children, Harry and Fanny, lived across the river from the Brickells. Tuttle, who came to Miami in 1891 after purchasing a tract of 640 acres of land on the north bank of the Miami River, was also from Cleveland. Tuttle's husband, Frederick, died in 1886, and she decided to move to South Florida due to what was described as the "delicate health" of her children. Tuttle had seen the area in 1875, at the age of twenty-six, when she visited her father, Ephraim Sturtevant, who homesteaded in the area of today's Miami Shores. Sturtevant had been a friend of Brickell in Cleveland until a disagreement brought the friendship to a halt. (2) The Miami area, in the years leading up to the railroad's arrival, was better known as "Biscayne Bay Country." The only overland transportation to the area was by a hack (or stagecoach) line that ran from Lantana on the southern end of Lake Worth to Lemon City on Biscayne Bay. The few published accounts from that period describe the area as a wilderness that held much promise. (3) Lying five miles north of the Miami River, Lemon City could boast of only fifteen buildings in 1893. However, many homesteaders had settled on land up to five miles away from the core of the settlements. One of these buildings was a new hotel that could accommodate twenty-five to thirty guests. Two miles south were several people living in Buena Vista. "Cocoanut Grove" (as it was spelled then) sat ... south of the Miami River; it contained twenty-eight buildings "of a very neat and tasteful character," two large stores doing an "immense business," and a hotel run by Charles and Isabella Peacock. Cutler, eight miles south of Cocoanut Grove, also contained a few settlers. (4) But the jewel on Biscayne Bay was Miami. The site where the Miami River emptied into the bay was described as the cream of the property in the area. There was rich, heavy hammock growth, and to the south, on the Brickell lands, a high, rocky bluff, which was characterized as "one of the finest building sites ... more on goingtothebeach.com

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