In the early 1950’s the seaplane base for Pan American World Airways at the south end of 27th Avenue became the Dinner Key Auditorium. The exhibition hall and auditorium is best known for the infamous 1969 concert where rocker Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors, was arrested on charges he exposed himself onstage.
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The first Orange Bowl parade was held on January 1, 1936. It was part of a festival intended to attract tourists and support the University of Miami football team. It featured 26 floats and eight bands. The parade, which bumped along from Biscayne Boulevard to Southwest 12th Avenue, was held every year except three during […]
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In 1968, a local disc jockey introduced Betty Wright as “super-Miami’s own homegrown superstar”. Wright, who grew up in Liberty City, began her solo career at 11 when Clarence Reid and Willie Clarke heard her singing in Johnny’s Record Rack, the base for their Deep City label. A few years later she recorded Girls Can’t Do […]
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When it opened on October 1, 1962, on Kendall Drive off U.S. 1, Dadeland was dubbed ‘deadland’ because North Kendall Drive, which passes in front of it, was branded “The Road to Nowhere.” Built as an open-air strip center, Dadeland started up at 400,000 square feet with 62 merchants, including Burdines as its only anchor. […]
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The yearly grind of hurricane season for South Floridians has given way to many interesting and at times strange methods of dealing with mother nature. Take a look at hurricane seasons of years past.
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Building your own bomb shelter was a Cold War-era survival tactic for thousands of families nationwide and in South Florida. Welcome to the late ’50s and early ’60s, when nuclear nervousness gave urgency to a trend that made headlines in 1961. Everyone was building a shelter — or should have been, according to the experts […]
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The first bookmobile in Miami began in January of 1928. Since then, bookmobiles have been the bearers of books and carriers of culture for patrons in outlying areas. At the program’s peak in 1979, the county maintained about 20 bookmobiles that fanned out all over Dade County. People checked out 293,000 books from the mobile […]
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Matheson Hammock was founded in 1930 when the pioneer Matheson family donated 85 acres of tropical hardwood hammock off Old Cutler Road to Dade County. The family wanted the land to be used only for the benefit and enjoyment of the public as a botanical park and that it be “preserved and protected in a […]
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On September 15, 1928, Capt. Edwin Musick took off from a dirt runway with 340 pounds of mail and two passengers bound for Key West. It was the first recorded flight from what would become Miami International Airport. Pan American Airways shifted its operations from Key West to Miami and purchased 116 acres of swampland […]
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Tropical Park, at Bird Road and Palmetto Expressway, was Tropical Park race track from 1931 to 1972. The 245-acre track opened Dec. 26, 1931, and closed after the 1972 racing season. For 40 years, it was a winter haven for northern and local gamblers, jockeys and horse owners. By 1971, the track was in financial […]
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