Dade County FlArchives History - Books .....A Bay Unspoiled, Chapter 1 1965 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/fl/flfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 April 1, 2009, 6:06 pm Book Title: Memories Of Old Miami CHAPTER ONE A Bay Unspoiled BISCAYNE BAY was crystal clear. You could see the fish swimming below the docks and the oyster shells clinging to the pilings. You could even see the soldier crabs walking in the turtle grass on the bottom. There was no pollution, no murkiness. A sandy beach, where a child could play, formed a white ribbon between the green mangroves and the remarkably blue bay - a bay unspoiled by islands. Nobody could believe then that things would ever be any different. I was a little fellow when we moved to Miami from Kissimmee in 1905, but I can still remember walking on the fishermen's docks while holding onto the hand of my Dad. We lived for a while in the home of Charlie Oxar on Biscayne Bay at about where NE 12th Street and Second Avenue now intersect. At that time the shoreline was a lot different from what it is today. It ran along about where Biscayne Boulevard is now located - from Sears' store to Bay Point. Just south of Sears, the shoreline swept inland in a graceful curve, creating a cove. The cove ended near the site of the Freedom Tower, where at that time the Florida East Coast Railroad depot stood. Fishermen kept their launches anchored in the cove, and here were also docks, as well as turtle kraals and sponge kraals in the mangroves behind the white beach. The Belcher Oil Co. and the Miami Municipal docks occupy an area which was then in the bay beyond the cove. This scene remained much the same for several years; except that later they built fish houses along the border of the cove, just east of the Boulevard. When I was older I sometimes went fishing with my Dad; and he would row out away from the FEC terminal docks where we could fish in the channel. It was an unusual day when we didn't catch anything. Dad, who had been a railroad conductor, decided to go into the road building business, and we moved to Miami where there was work for him to do. He came down ahead of the family to look around. I remember a story he told about getting off the train at Sixth Street and finding himself "out in the country." "Why did they build the depot so far from town?" he asked a Negro hack driver who was taking him to the Biscayne Hotel, located at the present site of Burdine's, and Flagler Street. The Negro, stumped by the question, thought for a moment. "Cap'n, I don't 'zactly know," he said, "but I think they wanted to get the depot close to the railroad track." Dade made arrangements for us to move in with Charlie Oxar because he had 20 acres in pasture and Dad needed a place to keep his mules. Oxar, like many other people living in Southeast Florida at that time, went barefooted. While we were living in the house with him, the weather turned cool and he came down with a cold. "It'll teach me a lesson," Charlie told my mother. "I should have known better than to wash my feet when the weather's cold." (Charles E. Oxar, 90, living at 1051 NE 92nd Street at the time this was written, was born in Dade County several years before Miami was incorporated. His father, Michael, a native of Germany, settled in Dade County in 1869). I remember Dad's mules very well. They were beauties - fine, sleek Missouri mules - three teams of them. Dad had three two-mule Studebaker wagons that he used for hauling rock and fill to build roads. Mr. Oxar wanted to buy one of those mules, and he offered Dad a five-acre tract at NE 13th Street and Second Ave. for one. But Dad couldn't see it. You couldn't make a living on five acres of pines and palmettos. Dad built several roads in Dade County. He built NE Second Avenue from Eighth Street to Buena Vista - 36th St. at that time Eighth Street was the north line of the Miami city limit. Dad was using Nassau Negroes to grub out palmettos for the right-of-way. It was summer time and the sun was bearing down very hot. A Negro leaned on the handle of his grubbing hoe, wiped a handful of streaming sweat from his face and flung it. "Boss," he said to Dad, 'you should hail a mahn; it's a 'undred in the shaide." "Don't you worry none about how hot it is in the shade," Dad said. "You ain't gonna be working in the shade." There was skulduggery in those days just like there is now. One contractor, who extended Flagler St. beyond the railroad tracks, merely chopped off the palmettos and covered the stems with rock. The palmettos sprouted through the paving and within a few weeks you couldn't even see where the road was built. Unfortunately the contractor already had been paid. I have a vivid memory of living in Mr. Oxar's frame house, which stood on stilts, so that we could stand on the front porch and look out across the cove. It was fun to watch the naphtha launches and sailboats come in and go out of the cove. You could hear the putt-putt of the auxiliary single-cylinder motors that the fishermen cranked up when there was not enough wind to fill the sails. (Naphtha, a petroleum product heavier than gasoline but lighter than kerosene, was a common motor fuel in those days.} I used to go with my older brothers to the beach and watch the fishermen and the spongers bring in their catches on skiffs and bring them ashore. Giant loggerhead turtles from the Gulf Stream and green turtles caught in Biscayne Bay were kept in the kraals. And sponges, which also were taken from the bay, were kept in pens among the mangroves until, cleaned by the tide washing back and forth. We don't think about it today, but when I' was a boy fresh meat - beef and pork - were scarce items. For this reason the turtle kraals were improtant. The turtles provided a sure source of fresh meat. The only time we ever had beef or pork was during a cool spell in the winter. Somebody would kill an animal and you could buy fresh meat for a day or two. I can remember so well the luxury of eating fresh beef or pork. In 1906 we moved to Buena Vista, into a three-story frame house owned by Z. T. Merritt - on Biscayne Bay at where NE 38th Street is now located. We moved in just ahead of the hurricane of Oct. 18, the storm which passed through the Florida Keys and sank a barge on which men working on the overseas railroad were living. Over 100 persons on the barge lost their lives. The wind blew the heavy rain beneath the shingles of our house and by the time the storm had passed you couldn't find a dry spot in the whole place. (That hurricane rain would have been a blessing three years later when the house caught on fire and burned up everything we owned.) As the hurricane approached, the wind came out of the southeast, and it carried the water from Biscayne Bay ashore in a dangerous hurricane tide. But in those days nobody lived in the low areas, and, also, the houses were built on stilts. So, as far as I can remember, no lives were lost in the area. But large numbers of big fish were washed ashore - tarpon, barracudas, groupers and jewfish, as well as smaller fish like the mangrove snapper. After the tide receded, we found the fish in the mangroves and palmettos - unbelievable numbers of them. Dad said they got sand in their gills when the storm stirred up the bay and drowned. Dad and my older brothers - and everybody else who could use a shovel - were burying fish for days. The stench was almost unbearable after a couple of days. I helped by hunting for the fish among the palmettos. But many of the fish were too big for me to pull out, and I had to call for help. The bay was soon as clear as ever, and more fish came in to replace those lost in the storm. But in time the water became murky as the growing city dumped its sewage in the bay. The fish also began to disappear, and so did the turtles and the sponges. Nor do I expect ever to see so many fish in the bay as we used to have. The dredging and filling and consequent destruction of the fish feeding grounds makes it unlikely that the bay will ever become attractive to large numbers of fish again. When you see the changes that have taken place within the past 50 years it makes you realize how important it is to save the beauty and the natural resources that have escaped destruction Additional Comments: Extracted from: "Memories of Old Miami" by Hoyt Frazure as told to Nixon Smiley Reprinted from a series of articles first appearing in Sunday Magazine of The Miami Herald Undated, but circa 1965 File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/fl/dade/history/1965/memories/abayunsp33nms.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/flfiles/ File size: 9.1 Kb