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Year | Month | Day | Event | Related Resource |
1823 | July | 03 | Monroe County was created. It not only included all of what would later be Dade County, but all of the land in Florida south of Lake Okeechobee as well. The county seat was in Key West. | display |
1836 | January | 06 | Dade County was created. At the time, it included present-day Martin, Palm Beach, and Broward Counties, though Monroe County retained the western Keys. Indian Key was the county seat of the newly created Dade County. Despite these early beginnings, by 1870 the county still had fewer than one hundred residents. | display |
1845 | March | 03 | Florida was admitted to the Union. It was admitted as a slave state, and at the time, almost one half of its 54,447 people were African American. | display |
1874 | February | 08 | The Cocoanut Grove post office closed when Dr. Porter left Miami to follow his wife to Boston. | |
1884 | John Frow became Cocoanut Grove's first land subdivider. He sold parts of his land to his brother Joseph Frow, James A. Waddell, three of his sisters, and several others. He kept forty-three acres for himself. | |||
1896 | May | 15 | Miami's first newspaper, The Miami Metropolis, made its debut, stating that, "This is the first paper ever published on the beautiful Bay Biscayne, the most southern newspaper on the mainland of the United States." It went on to describe the young settlement as "the coming metropolis of South Florida." | display |
1897 | January | 16 | The Hotel Royal Palm opened for business fifteen days behind schedule. Henry Flagler built the hotel at a cost of $750,000 to draw passengers onto his new railroad line extending to Miami. The hotel stood until 1931. | display |
1899 | July | 06 | The post office request made by William Larkins was made official, and the area became known as Larkins. He had tried to name the area Manila, but the residents of the area that is today South Miami preferred the name of Larkins. | |
1903 | September | 15 | The first edition of Frank Stoneman's Miami Evening Record was published. In 1907, it merged with the Miami Morning News to become the Miami Morning News Record, and in 1910, that paper was replaced by The Miami Herald. | December | 11 | The Miami Metropolis became a daily newspaper, being published every day except Sunday. |
1906 | Frank Stoneman (the father of Marjory Stoneman Douglas) started the first morning newspaper, the Morning News Record. He was an opponent of Everglades drainage, and his editorials infuriated Governor Napoleon Bonaparte Broward. | display | ||
1907 | John Roop built an observation tower on Musa Isle. It allowed people a view out over the Everglades, which then started at what is today N.W. 22nd Avenue. | July | 31 | The last edition of the Miami Evening Record was published as the paper merged with the Miami Morning News. | December | 02 | The first issue of the Miami Morning News Record was published, after the Miami Evening Record had merged with the Miami Morning News. It was published every day except Monday. |
1909 | April | 30 | Palm Beach County was created. It had been part of Dade County. | |
1910 | November | 30 | The last edition of the Miami Morning News Record was published. It became the Miami Herald the following day. | December | 01 | The first edition of the Miami Herald was published by Frank Shutts. He was assisted by the financial backing of Henry Flagler and the paper's editor Frank Stoneman. The paper replaced the Miami Morning News Record. It was published six days a week, every day except Monday. | display |
1911 | February | 13 | The Miami Herald published its first Monday edition, making it a true daily newspaper. | |
1912 | Carl Fisher arrived in Miami Beach late in the year. He wanted to develop a new city in and of itself, separate from Miami. | display | May | Before the start of construction linking Miami Beach by bridge to the mainland, the Lummus Brothers acquired 500 acres to the south of Collins, from 14th Street to Government Cut. The land was bought from Charles Lum and Edmund Wilson for $80,000. The two brothers established the Ocean Beach Reality Company with a vision of a modest city composed of single-family residences fronting the ocean. The brothers became pioneers of beach-front property sales. | May | The U.S. War Department gives developers permission to construct a bridge spanning Biscayne Bay. Realty firms prepared for what they believed would be a surge in population upon the bridge's completion. The bridge would be named the Collins Bridge. | July | 01 | Thomas Pancoast arrived in Miami. He was secretary and treasurer of the Miami Beach Improvement Company. John Collins was the company's president. Together, both men pursued loans from the Lummus brothers, both of whom were involved in banking. | display | July | 09 | The Ocean Beach Realty Company filed the first plots of land on the beach. The Lummus brothers' plots preceded those filed by John Collins and Carl Fisher five and six months later respectively. | display |
1914 | The W.J. Brown Hotel opened on Miami Beach. It was the first hotel to open on the island. | |||
1915 | January | 01 | The Miami Chamber of Commerce was founded. | display | March | 26 | John Collins, the Lummus brothers, and Carl Fisher consolidated their efforts and successfully incorporated the Town of Miami Beach. At the time, the Beach had three hundred residents, but a mere thirty-three registered voters. They elected J.N. Lummus as the first mayor of Miami Beach. | April | 30 | Broward County was created. It had previously been part of Dade County. |
1916 | The Lummus brothers offered free lots to anyone who promised to build homes on their land. | |||
1917 | The status of Miami Beach was changed from town to city. | |||
1919 | March | 18 | Cocoanut Grove residents voted to incorporate their town. In doing so, they decided to drop the "a" from the original spelling, changing the town's name to Coconut Grove. | display |
1933 | January | 01 | Miami hosted its first Orange Bowl, even though it was not referred to as such. The University of Miami and Manhattan College played in "The First Annual New Year's Day Football Classic," which was held at Moore Park. | display | August | 17 | The Miami Herald wrote that, "Miami's gates will always remain open to Cubans." This came four days after the violence that resulted in the fall of Machado and the departure of a number of Cubans for South Florida. |
1936 | December | 20 | Parrot Jungle Island opened. Started by Franz Scherr and originally located on Red Road, one hundred visitors paid twenty-five cents admission to see twenty-five birds and the flora and fauna of his park on this first day. Today, Parrot Jungle is home to over one thousand birds and has moved to a site along the MacArthur Causeway between Miami and Miami Beach. The original grounds on Red Road remain, and the park has renamed as Pinecrest Gardens. | |
1947 | Marjory Stoneman Douglas released The Everglades: River of Grass. It was a landmark book in educating people on the significance of preserving and protecting the Everglades ecosystem. | display | ||
1949 | The Casablanca Hotel opened. Roy France designed the hotel, which was named after the famous film staring Humphrey Bogart. The hotel can be described as Modernist in its design, but it also incorporated elements of the International Style and Hollywood-themed kitsch. The latter of these came to influence the way developers in Las Vegas, Nevada designed their resorts decades later. | display | ||
1951 | The Bombay Hotel opened. The hotel's name was later changed to the Golden Sands Hotel. It was the first hotel in Miami Beach to offer its guests a parking garage. Norman M. Giller designed the building. On why his was the first hotel to have a garage, Giller said that, "in the Art Deco days we were in a Depression, so nobody was thinking about cars, because not too many people had them." | |||
1952 | The Dade County Auditorium was integrated. The change followed world-renowned contralto Marian Anderson's refusal to sing for segregated audiences. | |||
1953 | The Lido Spa opened on Belle Isle along the Venetian Causeway. | |||
1968 | Biscayne Bay was listed as a national monument. Congress cited its "rare combination of terrestrial, marine, and amphibious life in a tropical setting of great natural beauty." | |||
1978 | March | 12 | The first Calle Ocho Festival was held in Little Havana. Called Open House 8, over 100,000 people attended the event. | |
1979 | The Everglades were designated as a World Heritage Site by the United Nations. | display | ||
1980 | Biscayne Bay National Park was established. As the status was changed from a national monument to a national park, Congress authorized the acquisition of new keys and reefs in the bay. | display | July | 07 | The Metrozoo opened. This first section was twenty-five acres. | display |
2000 | Miami Beach was named the #1 Urban Beach by the Surfrider Foundation. | |||
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