Biscayne Bay/Miami Beach Local History

Marjory Stoneman Douglas, in Florida: The Long Frontier, tells how Juan Ponce de Leon, sailing southward in 1513 from his landing near St. Augustine, found "The bright nameless great bay and fresh springs." He called it Chequescha, the bay we know as Biscayne. But there are several stories about where the bay got its name. Most assume it is merely a variant on the Bay of Biscay, in the Atlantic Ocean north of Spain and west of France. Fontaneda says it was named because of the wreck there of a ship belonging to a man called "El Biscaino" ("the Biscayan," from the Spanish province of Biscaya). Mrs. Douglas accepts this, and Helen Muir, in Miami U.S.A., adds that on one of the islands in the bay lived Don Pedro el Biscaino, who, upon his return to Spain, became keeper of the swans at the Spanish court. The name Vizcaino appears on the de la Puente map of 1765. Vizcaino is said to have been the name of a prosperous Spanish merchant in Manila, who set out from Mexico to colonize lower California. Interestingly, the bay was called Sandwich Gulf on J. L. Williams' map of 1837.

On May 9, 1974, this commemorative marker was dedicated, designating the landing site of Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles on Biscayne Bay in 1567. Menendez returned several Indians held captive on the west coast and established friendly relations with the Tequesta Indians. Father Juan Rogel and Brother Francisco Villareal organized a Jesuit mission near the thirty-man fort built by the Spanish. In 1568 Brother Villareal wrote the first letter known to have been written in Miami, describing the life of the Indians and the problems of converting them to Christianity. He also mentioned that two comedies had been staged for the soldiers, one of them about the flesh and the devil.

In 1925 Miami Beach was the hottest spot in America. Thousands flocked to this narrow spit of land between Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic Ocean to be part of the trendy vacation scene -- grand hotels, bathing beauties, speedboat races, polo matches. Yet just fifteen years earlier, this magical playground by the sea did not exist -- not the hotels, not the mansions, not even the ground it was built on. Everything -- even the brand new paved road to Florida -- was the inspiration of one extraordinary man: Carl Graham Fisher, "Mr. Miami Beach," a millionaire promoter and entrepreneur from Indiana. Through imaginative development of the areas swampland, Fisher created a tropical paradise which he then cleverly marketed by bombarding the country's newspapers with ads of Rosy, the circus elephant, filming bathing beauties on the beach. In its "American Experience" series, PBS has produced a full program on his life. For details go to www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/miami/filmmore/description.html.

Home  §   Officers/Past Regents  §   Meetings/Programs Local History  §   Chapter History

Web hyperlinks to non-DAR sites are not the responsibility of the NSDAR, the state organizations, or individual DAR chapters. Last updated: September 28, 2009 Hosted by FSSDAR VIS.