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    Biscayne National Park
    Biscayne National Park
    Biscayne National Park
    Ebook168 pages56 minutes

    Biscayne National Park

    By James A. Kushlan and Kirsten Hines

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    About this ebook

    Biscayne National Park protects the larger portion of south Florida's Biscayne Bay, a uniquely tropical lagoon harboring crocodiles, manatees, dolphins, and Caribbean fish. Tropical trees cover its islands, while the world's fourth-longest coral reef sits offshore. Native Americans lived here thousands of years ago; the Spanish held it for 200 years. Hundreds of ships foundered on the reef, fueling a lucrative wrecking industry. In the late 1800s, hardy homesteaders created an agricultural and fishing community. In the 1920s and 1930s, it became a playground for the newly rich and famous. Bracketed by Miami and Key Biscayne to the north and Key Largo to the south, the nearby population eventually grew to over 2.5 million residents and over 14 million annual visitors. To protect these unique natural and historical resources and to assure its enjoyment by future generations, a half century ago, the federal government created Biscayne National Monument, which later became Biscayne National Park.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 25, 2017
    ISBN9781439662854
    Biscayne National Park
    Author

    James A. Kushlan

    James A. Kushlan is a biologist, conservationist, author, and former trustee of HistoryMiami Museum. Kirsten Hines is an environmental educator, writer, and wildlife photographer. They are authors of Arcadia Publishing's Key Biscayne and Biscayne National Park. They live in Coconut Grove, Florida.

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      Book preview

      Biscayne National Park - James A. Kushlan

      95.

      INTRODUCTION

      At the extreme southeastern edge of Florida is a remarkable body of water—Biscayne Bay, a tropical lagoon affixed to an otherwise temperate continent. Seaward, the bay is confined by shallow banks and a series of islands starting in the north with the Miami Beach peninsula. Farther seaward lie marine shallows and the continental United States’ only coral reef. This book is about the bay and its adjacent landscapes and seascapes stretching from the coastal mangrove swamp to the coral reef. It is about its images, history, people, and stories. The book’s photographs are all of the bay and nearby keys areas. This book especially is about Biscayne National Park, celebrating in images and stories the 50th anniversary of the park’s establishment. The park preserves and protects much of the central and southern Biscayne Bay and nearby lands and waters. Our book Key Biscayne in Arcadia Publishing’s Images of America series tells some of the story of northern Biscayne Bay.

      When the Spaniards arrived, Biscayne Bay was an estuary fed by fresh water emerging from short, seasonally flowing rivers complemented by freshwater springs erupting from the bay bottom itself, all fueled by the hydraulic head provided by the vast Everglades perched just inland. To the east, tides and wind moved warm salty water of the Atlantic Ocean into and out of the bay to mix with the fresh. These waters created a diverse, productive environment with waters as clear as those of the Bahamas today. Biscayne Bay was, and is, shallow, averaging about 10 feet deep. Originally, it was lined with freshwater marshes and swamps of salt-tolerant mangrove trees. Its bottom was covered with seagrasses, sponges, algae, and soft corals. Although the freshwater flows have been much diminished and the bay’s waters afflicted by decades of abuse by millions of people, much else of what early explorers saw remains, especially in the central and southern parts of the bay.

      The bay’s string of islands are called keys, derived from the Spanish word cayo. Sandy in the north and rocky in the south, they were originally covered by mangrove swamp, coastal prairie, and hardwood forest composed mostly of trees from the West Indies. The tidal flow passes around the islands and through narrow channels, called finger channels or cuts, as they are in the kindred environment of the Bahamas. The largest and most navigable natural cuts are towards the north: Norris Cut (historically Narrows Cut and then Nares Cut) and Bear Cut (originally Bear’s Cut). Tide also flowed across shallow banks, initially called Pearl Oyster Banks then Biscayne Flats and sometimes the Safety Valve. These are so shallow that only shoal-draft vessels can pass over them and then only at high water. To get into and out of the bay, sandbars and shallow hard bottom have to be successfully transited. Other shoals, such as Featherbed Bank, cross the bay. For most of its history, the bay was not an easy place to enter, leave, or traverse and not a welcoming harbor to the inexperienced.

      Eastward of the keys, cuts, and Biscayne Flats lie seagrass beds, rocky bottom, sand patches, and patch reefs. The slightly deeper Hawk Channel (originally Hawke Channel) provided early settlers with a passageway between the Biscayne Bay area and their main town, Key West, up to a three-day sail away, weather permitting. Farther eastward lies the Florida reef tract, biologically diverse and for centuries a significant hazard to ships and to mariners’ lives. The warm, northward flowing Florida Current, an arm of the Gulf Stream, is the raison d’etre of the tropical character of the Biscayne Bay area, bringing the tropical marine waters, animals, and plants that make this area biologically unique in North America. Beyond the reef and Gulf Stream are the Bahamas and Cuba, only 60 miles and 150 miles, respectively, from Elliott Key.

      The bay area’s geologic history began about 10,000 years ago as rising sea levels created the lagoon. When sea level stabilized 5,000 years ago, sandy islands now called Miami Beach, Virginia Key, and Key Biscayne alighted on the backbone of a 100,000-year-old fossilized reef tract. This Key Largo Limestone continued, trending south and southwest, underlying the Biscayne Flats to emerge as the northern Florida Keys, starting with Soldier Key then continuing through Elliott Key and on to Key Largo and the rest of the northern Florida Keys.

      Recorded human history began about the same time, 10,000 years ago. Native Americans lived near what is now the bay’s margins but were well upland. Once the bay flooded, people living along mainland rivers used the bay’s islands seasonally and later perhaps more permanently. Fish, queen conch, monk seals, turtles, tropical fruits, and palms provided sufficient food and other materials to support the civilization of these hunter-gatherer, nonagricultural Indians. By the late 1500s, contact with Europeans had altered native cultures and more than decimated their population such that we find no evidence of their continued use of the southern bay or its islands.

      The bay’s story was grounded in its isolation. South Florida was essentially an island, surrounded by the sea on one side and inland marsh and swamp on the other. For thousands of years, people came and went by canoe, traveling coastwise or through the inland marshes, or by walking with great difficulty along the shoreline. Not until the Seminole Wars was there any land trail, and there was no wagon road until

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