Last entry

The end of 2010 also marks the end of this year-long project to raise awareness about the unique, beautiful, and environmentally fragile island of Virginia Key, the 1,000-acre barrier island off the coast of the City of Miami.

This is the last entry in View from Virginia Key.

But this is not the last chapter in the history of the island. There are many more stories to be told, old and new. There is a wilderness within,  growing and evolving. There are many new places yet to be discovered and enjoyed.

Vigilance is still in order if the island is to continue to be ecologically restored and preserved for future generations to enjoy.

Even with a master plan approved by the City of Miami earlier this year, there is much uncertainty about the island’s future development or preservation.

Its wild spaces, scenic vistas and quiet places for reflection distinguish the island.  It is a place apart. And should remain so, free of the commercial clutter and cacophony of the bustling metropolis across Biscayne Bay.

And for those considering future "improvements,"  the eighteenth-century English poet Alexander Pope has this advice: “Consult the genius of the place in all.” The genius is in the water, the sky, the open spaces and that magic that happens among them.

Enjoy. 

(C) Copyright 2010. All Rights Reserved.
For information on upcoming events and news about Virginia Key, join “Friends of Virginia Key” on Facebook.

Volunteer in the New Year on Virginia Key

Volunteers have replanted native species throughout the island.

Resolved: in the new year to do something for nature on Virginia Key

Go ahead, make Virginia Key part of your New Year’s resolutions and join the community effort to protect and preserve one of our community’s natural jewels.

Here are  some of the volunteer organizations working to restore the natural environment on Virginia Key and throughout South Florida:

Urban Paradise Guild.
www.urban-paradise.org
“Our mission is to re-create native habitats in the Urban areas of Miami-Dade County, and to promote sustainable models for healthy living that safeguard, enhance and integrate the human and natural worlds for the benefit of both.”

Tropical Audubon Society
www.tropicalaudubon.org
“We believe in the wisdom of nature's design. We seek to foster and promote ecological conscientiousness in our community.”

Sierra Club, Miami Group
http://florida.sierraclub.org/miami/
"Our mission is to enjoy and protect the natural places in South Florida, to teach others to understand and respect the fragile environment in which we live, and to practice and promote the responsible use of South Florida's ecosystems and resources."

Citizens for a Better South Florida
www.abettersouthlflorida.org
“Citizens is dedicated to providing environmental education, particularly to the under-served community, that inspires active stewardship and preservation of the South Florida environment.”

TREEmendous Miami
www.treemendousmiami.org
“TREEmendous Miami consists of a dedicated group of people who like to plant trees so that we can make Miami-Dade a greener, cooler, healthier and more enjoyable environment in which to live. Our environment is our number one concern.”

(C) Copyright 2010  All Rights Reserved. www.viewfromvirginiakey.com
Also on Facebook, join Friends of Virginia Key for updates and event info.

Ten Things to Do on Virginia Key

For the tourist, transient and truly curious (willing to venture past the neighborhood mall), here are ten things to do on Virginia Key:

Eat. There are several restaurants, a few arepa/hot dog stands and a smoked fish joint: Rusty Pelican, the new Rickenbacker Fish Company, Bayside Hut, Jimbo’s and the  Hobie Beach stands. Or bring a picnic lunch. Best views are just about anywhere from the island out to aquamarine waters that surround it.

Sail. Hobie Beach has the rental boards. You’ll see the bright sails rustling in the sea breezes along the Rickenbacker Causeway. Or bring your own kayak, canoe, paddleboard. The water is crystal clear and teeming with fascinating critters.

Run/Walk. This is not just for the Brickell crowd. Park you car anywhere along the causeway parking lots and hike up the William Powell bridge (top of the Rickenbacker) and marvel at the Miami sky line to the north, the expanse of Biscayne Bay blue to the south. Particularly marvelous at sunset but inspiring anytime.

Hike. There’s an amazing Tropical Hammock to be discovered on Virginia Key and you don’t need a botany degree or birder’s eye to appreciate. Entrance off Virginia Key Beach (windsurfer’s beach across from the Miami-Dade South Water Treatment Facility - but don’t let that bother you from hiking).

Marvel.  At the icon of modern architecture, the Commodore Ralph Munroe Marine Stadium. It’s a sad mess right now but with lots of potential.

Amuse yourself. On the historic carousel and seaside train ride operating on weekends at the Historic Virginia Key Beach Park (entrance at the light across from University of Miami’s Rosensteil School just before the Bear Cut Bridge).

Fish. The fishing pier (old, closed bridge off the causeway) is open again. Can’t guarantee a catch but you might regain your serenity waiting for a bite.

Swim. OK it’s winter but if you’re from New York you won’t mind the surf temps.

Bird. As in check out the migrating songbirds in the hammock, shorebirds on the dunes.
   
Relax. It’s an island. A wilderness. A world away from that neighborhood mall.

(C) Copyright 2010. All Rights Reserved. Subscribe at www.viewfromvirginiakey.com
Also, join on Facebook: Friends of Virginia Key

Tracking the Great Black Hawk on Bird Count Day

The elusive Virginia Key Great Black Hawk may be spotted again today at the annual National Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count. 

The Great Black-Hawk of Virginia Key was seen and reported during the 2004-5 Virginia Key Christmas Bird Count, according to Robin Diaz, who wrote an excellent article on the life and times of this soaring bird that she describes as a “large (hawk) with short broad wings, short tail and long legs. The adult is black, while the juvenile is streaky brownish” usually seen near coastal mangroves. 

The annual bird count has been held since 1900 all around the country and is being held today in Miami Dade County with volunteers coordinated by  Tropical Audubon Society. The results provide statistics that can be used to gauge changes in the environment and the effects on bird populations. 

The statistics are also a window to the environmental deterioration that pollution, loss of habitat and climate change has wrought. 

Virginia Key is rich in bird life, from the 700-acre Bill Sadowski Critical Wildlife Area to the tropical hammock and dunes.  

In March, Tropical Audubon volunteers working with representatives of the Florida Department of Environment Protection (DEP), to document the the birds that forage, roost, nest or even merely fly over the 700-acre wildlife area that includes submerged lands, two spoil islands, intertidal mudflats and bars and tidal swamp forests along Virginia Key’s northwest shoreline. That  part of Virginia Key contains the largest remaining portion of unaltered mangrove forest and unaltered, submerged lands. 

On that trip, ospreys, great blue herons, snowy egret, ibis, cormorants, anhingas and brown pelicans were among the many species found. A look was also taken underwater to document the health of the seagrasses - including Johnson’s seagrass (Halophila johnsonii), which the federal government lists as a threatened species.


(C) 2010 copyright. All Rights Reserved. Subscribe to www.viewfromvirginiakey.com for latest articles on the ecology,history and events on Virginia Key.
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Winter Solstice Drumming on Virginia Key

Catch the rhythms of the sea at the full  moon drum circle .

Celebrate the winter solstice on Virginia Key this weekend at the monthly drumming circle that takes places at the Historic Virginia Key Beach Park. 

There are two opportunities to join the “Full Moon” drumming circles - either as spectator or participant, all are welcome: 

Nighttime drumming:  Sat., Dec. 18 from 6  to 9 p.m.

Daytime drumming:  Sun., Dec. 19 from 2 p.m. to sundown.

This year the winter solstice is Dec. 21, which will also be marked by a lunar eclipse . Astronomically speaking, the winter solstice takes places exactly when the Earth tilts farthest away from the sun. Many cultures associate it with rebirth - the beginning of a new year.   

It is also tied to the earth and its ritual and rhythmic changes -- which makes drumming the right ritual for an island that is wild at heart, a refuge and natural garden on land and sea. 

As one participant put: “This is the place were connections with the natural world happen.”

Enjoy!

If you go:  Drums and other acoustic instruments are welcome. Show your drums at the park entrance to get the park entrance ($5) waived. Directions: the Historic Virginia Key Beach Park entrance is just before the Bear Cut bridge heading south toward Key Biscayne. Turn left at the traffic light. More info: Historic Virginia Key Beach Park, 305-960-4600.


(c) 2010 copyright. All Rights Reserved by www.viewfromvirginiakey.com
On Facebook: Join Friends of Virginia Key. 

Virginia Key as a great civic space

On the road, in the buildings, and through the landscape, Virginia Key is a great civic space that has the potential to build community. 


But only if the community is not shut out.  

A  Virginia Key of great civic spaces is a place where public areas are protected - public shorelines among them.   It's still possible on an island that is publicly owned, filled with wild and open spaces,  and possessing an extraordinary public shoreline that is raw but beautiful in its simplicity.  

Virginia Key is also a place filled with  buildings of civic significance:  the historic Miami Marine Stadium, the Miami  Seaquarium, the science complex (University of Miami’s Rosensteil School and the various NOAA buildings), and the segregation-era buildings  of the Historic Virginia Key Beach. 

And there’s the road in -- the Rickenbacker Causeway -- designed as public parkway by landscape architect William Lyman Phillips in the 1940‘s. 

Restoring these civic buildings and spaces would go a long way to restoring a sense of place in a city that is apparently short of civic “centeredness” by design.  

“In this city, we don’t have a lot of public infrastructure,” architect Allan Shulman said Tuesday at a presentation on Miami Architecture, a new guidebook he co-authored with Randall Robinson, a landscape architect and James Donnelly, a historian. 

The book not only documents buildings of architectural significance but also places them in context.

Robinson, writing on the city’s history, describes how Miami sprouted into existence like a Wild West “gold rush” town, “with little regard for the creation of civic spaces.”

That can be remedied by making Virginia Key the new civic center, a place everyone feels they have a stake in protecting and preserving because it is kept in public hands, not parceled off to private development.

Photo: courtesy of University of Miami archives

(C) 2010 Copyright. All Rights Reserved by www.viewfromvirginiakey.com
Also, join on Facebook: Friends of Virginia Key

Port of Virginia Key?

Map of North Point of Virginia Key under review. In the past, the land was used as a deposit site for bay bottom materials produced by channel dredging operations of the Port of Miami.  

The North Point of Virginia Key, where bicyclists want to create a mountain bike trail, and which has been closed to the public for years, was once slated to be a new airport or port facility.  

The City of Miami purchased the land from the State of Florida in 1942. The deed states that “the lands are to be used by the City of Miami for the purposes of harbors and airport constructions and development.” 

It also had this proviso: should the area be used for any purpose other than harbor or airport construction, the state would automatically get the land back. 


Of course, the City is no longer in the business of running airports or ports. In 1945, the City of Miami transferred to Miami Dade County the ownership and operation of the airport; the operation of the seaport was conveyed in 1960. 


Today the North Point is considered an environmental gem, though parts of it must still undergo significant ecological restoration.  Most of the North Point, which is next to the state-designated Bill Sadowski Critical Wildlife Area, is  zoned conservation under Miami 21, the City's new zoning code. 


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Also, join Facebook: Friends of Virginia Key 

Take a lead from bicyclists

Cheers to the bicyclists who have apparently taken it upon themselves to open the North Point of Virginia Key -- forging trails in the backcountry of Australian Pine detritus where tons dredge material has sculpted a terrain of ledges and hills perfect to pop some wheelies.   

A story this weekend in the Miami Herald states a bicycle group with a little donated cash and a lot of will power, is carving out the bike trails. 

Maybe this will start a trend: 

Hikers will blaze trails. 
Park enthusiasts will plop down benches.
Kayakers will launch en masse - and proclaim the spot the public boat ramp.  

And a public park island will emerge. 

Cheers to the bicyclists.  Enjoy. 

And cheers to many others who find this island beautiful, rare and wild. And want to keep it that way. 
Take a lead from the bicyclists and forge your own path to parkland.


It may be the only way it will happen.

(C) 2010 copyright. All Rights Reserved by viewfromvirginiakey.com

Join on Facebook:  Friends of Virginia Key

.

The island: a retrospective

 

Guest blogger Nick Ducassi visits "the island" on assignment for Viewfromvirginiakey.  

The invite was cryptic: "Everyone who should be there will be; we all will be."

Hipster catnip, no doubt. 

One of the  Art Basel Miami Beach 2010 events, "The Island" was a unique twist on the art gallery experience, scattering 17 art pieces in the sand, mangroves, and forest of Flagler Memorial Island. 

We step off into the sand.

The letters F-A-M-E, each bedazzled with light bulbs, sit strewn in the sand. 

First sign of life/art: Five folks in flowing white garb carry pink poles. We found the artist himself on the shore. He says the poles must always touch, and always move either clockwise or counterclockwise. You can jump in the middle of the circle, as my friend does, and cause them to change direction. An unbroken but everchanging chain of energy...or something like that. 

Pressing on, we find vinyls in the sand, televisions in the woods, and four ladies in tights, flanked by an amplifier, a DVD player, and a television. They dance, chant, and shriek in hellacious (and hilarous) style. Macbeth, anyone?

Sifting through some bushes, I come upon another art piece. 

Full garbage bags. Large Sheets of Cardboard. Boxes, lanterns, and what looks like plastic wrap. It's Trash. 

Now this is brilliant art. Except the trash isn't part of a piece--it's "the island's" staging area. Cheers to irony.

And through all this, I can't help but wonder...aren't we missing the point? "The Island" is cool because instead of white walls and air conditioning, it's a gallery made of sand and blue sky. But all anyone can look at is the "art."

Even when it unintentionally make a nice "tongue-in-cheek" art -- the staging area non-art piece comes to mind -- the real art isn't the shrieking witches or the vinyls in the sand. It's the sand. It's not the TV in the woods. It's the woods. It's the water. It's this ISLAND, people.

Blade Runner pops into my mind. 


@2010 Copyright. All Rights Reserved by Viewfromvirginiakey.com
On Facebook: join Friends of Virginia Key. 

An island where life imitates art (and visa versa)

island: a tract of land completely surrounded by water, and not large enough to be called a continent

deserted island: an island with no people

the island : an Art Basel Miami 2010 exhibit.

Maybe it takes some outsiders  - artistic ones at that - to remind us of what’s really cool about Miami. 

How about a lush, tropical island where no people live (officially) but wildlife abounds, that’s just off the urban grid. That would be Virginia Key.

But the (mythical) island created by the Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND),  a non-profit art organization,  seeks to emulate just such a vibe at Flagler Memorial Island during Art Basel this weekend.

Listen:  

they say that twin lovers were lured there once.¹

that they came on a boat of cloth.²

that they still hold hands on the bank.

a message:

"the earth seemed unearthly. we are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there - there you could look at a thing monstrous and free." ⁱ

they say that their spirits remain.³

multiplied. infinite. ever moving.⁴

that she makes her way to the wilderness, deliberately⁵, and others, aware that they are there only - ghosts - ensuring the world does not fall apart....⁴

It’s part of a poem describing the art installation. The organizers told the New York Times they wanted to “create this feeling of being stranded on a deserted island that’s in unique contrast to the fanciness and luxuriousness of the fair.” 

The “off-the-grid spectacle” includes site-specific projects at Flagler Memorial Island by 15 artists creating art from natural materials, including sand, water and greenery. 

2010@ Copyright. All Rights Reserved View from Virginia Key
Art: "the island." Courtesy of Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND).

Biscayne Bay Waterkeeper Visits Rickenbacker Beaches

Biscayne Bay Waterkeepers - One Water Workshop 2010 from Miami World on Vimeo.

Pennekamp History Offers Cautionary Tale for Virginia Key

Key Largo’s coral reefs has the John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park. Virginia Key has the Biscayne Bay Aquatic Preserve and the Bill Sadowski Critical Wildlife Area.

Biologists monitor bird rookeries in the 700-acre Bill Sadowski Critical Wildlife Area on Virginia Key,

These special designations by the State of Florida have helped protect the wilderness areas of Virginia Key, including the surrounding waters, just as the creation of John Pennekamp State Park 50 years ago stopped the unfettered blasting and spearfishing that was on  course to devastate the fragile coral reefs off Key Largo.  

 A Miami Herald story today, “Aquatic Gem: The world’s first underwater park - John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park” documents the tenacity of those who understood the perils the area faced and worked to save it. 

It’s a cautionary tale and an inspiration to those fighting today to protect the wilderness areas of Virginia Key from proposed development both within and adjacent to the sea turtle nesting beaches, mangroves, tropical hammock and dunes.  

Until the island becomes part of the State Park or National Park system, it’s all we’ve got. That and a band of dedicated and vigilant citizens who have managed to carry the story so far.  

@2010 Copyright. All Rights Reserved. viewfromvirginiakey.com

On Facebook: Friends of Virginia Key 

What No One Talks About Needs to be Remembered on Virginia Key

The Historic Virginia Key Beach Park is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Historic Virginia Key Beach Park is a park born of the legacy of segregation. 

It is a legacy that the late M. Athalie Range, founding director of the park’s Trust, wanted to make sure was not forgotten. 

In her recollections (reprinted in a park brochure), Range revisits both the joy and pain of the past to summon a call to action to a new generation:

"Virginia Key Beach was special to us because of the laws of segregation. It was ours. It was the only place that welcomed us and the only place where we could be free, in a way. It was not a very good feeling to have the coast of Miami as a beach with all this beautiful water around you and you couldn’t enjoy it during the days of segregation when blacks were not welcome. Signs on beaches said No Jews, No Dogs, and No Coloreds.

I remember the popcorn, corndogs and Nehi sodas. The hurdy-gurdy music of the carousel, the whistle of the beach’s mini-train. I remember how going to the beach was an all-day affair; families would pack blankets an enough food to feed a small army and while away hours at the beach dancing, swimming and fellowshipping.

There were several developers and entrepreneurs who wanted to build on the beach. When we found that out, through public meetings, we had to plead with them not to let this happen. That is when we made the push to revitalize the beach as it was in those days. People don’t know the history of South Florida. Nobody talks about the segregated beaches and golf courses.

Those were our lunch counters (at the concession stand). Those are the things that need to be remembered. I hope my 10 grandchild and 10 great-grandchildren will be able to enjoy the work we’re trying to accomplish today. There is a legacy here.”

Miami-Dade County opened the beach park in 1945.

Support the legacy: 

The Historic Virginia Key Park Trust will be holding a fundraiser next month. All proceeds from the Larry Little Annual Celebrity Charity Golf Tournament  to be held Dec. 2-3, 2010 at the Inverrary Country Club in Lauderhill, will benefit the restoration, operation and capital improvement projects at the Historic Virginia Key Beach Park.  For more info on this event and other ways to support the park, contact Ingrid Stuart at 305-960-4617 or email istuart@miamigov.com.

The park was restored and reopened in 2008 after extensive renovations spearheaded by the Historic Virginia Key Beach Park Trust. 

@Copyright 2010. All Rights Reserved.  Subscribe to viewfromvirginiakey.com for the latest articles on ecology, history, explorations of Virginia Key. Also on Facebook: join Friends of Virginia Key. 

MiMo on Virginia Key

The Miami Seaquarium is MiMo  central on Virginia Key.
MiMo stands for Miami Modernist Architecture, a term landscape architect Randall Robinson and Miami Beach interior designer Teri D’Amico coined to describe a style of architecture from the 1950s and 1960s. (see info and link to the Nov. 28 MiMo Festival below).

The Miami Seaquarium, with its Buckminster Fuller-designed geodesic dome (19
60) and the historic Miami Marine Stadium, distinguish Virginia Key as home to a small, yet remarkable collection of institutional mid-century Modern architecture, according to Miami Architecture (University Press of Florida), a new book co-authored by Robinson.

The entry on the Seaquarium explains how it came to be:

..the Miami Seaquarium was one of a network of attractions constructed to exploit tourists’ thirst for exotic flora and fauna in this outpost of ‘subtropical America. It was also a major thematic attraction, designed to bolster tourism in Miami and to increase toll revenue on the Rickenbacker Causeway. ...The construction of more advanced aquatic theme parks in the intervening years, such as Sea World near Orlando, makes the Seaquarium’s 1950’s vintage plant seem quaint today. However, when completed it was one of only three large tank oceanariums in the United States and a technological feat of marine architecture and showmanship. 

LEARN MORE ABOUt MiMO:
The inaugural MiMo Festival takes place Sunday, 28, 2010. This "living art" festival includes a walking tour, art mural installations and performances throughout the day. 

@All Rights Reserved by Blanca Mesa, View from Virginia Key.

Subscribe at viewfromvirginiakey.com 

Also on Facebook, join Friends of Virginia Key.

Reading Virginia Key’s Future Through Climate Change

Given the odds of the significant impact on South Florida, one of the most important sessions of the Miami Book Fair for island hoppers could turn out to be the “Climate and the Environment”  session, where expert authors on climate change discuss our future under global warming.

This “Idea X-Change” session begins at 4 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 20, Room 7106 (Building 7, first floor), Miami Dade College, Wolfson Campus,  and features Heidi Cullen, a climatologist and environmental journalist, (The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes from a Climate-Changed Planet );  Gyynne Dyer (Climate Wars) and Peter Maass, (Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil). 

Scientists are predicting at least a three foot rise in sea level worldwide by the year 2020 and a recent New York Times  story, “Reading Earth’s Future in Glacial Ice,” singled out Miami as one of our country’s most vulnerable communities:
"Parts  of the East Coast and Gulf Coast would be hit hard...About 15 percent of the urbanized land in the Miami region could be inundated.” 

But don't take the New York Times word for it, the Miami Dade County  official climate change website has this to say:

“The biggest concern for South Florida, especially in Miami-Dade County, is the threat of "sea level rise." The oceans are expected to swell as the world becomes warmer. Ice melting from the poles will add to the volume of the oceans and the warmer oceans resulting from a warmer atmosphere will actually cause the oceans to grow in volume (warm water expands; cold water contracts). The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) predicts that Florida will see a rise in sea level of about 18-20 inches by the next century.

Higher seas means more than just less beachfront. Miami-Dade would become more vulnerable from storm damage. Wetlands and coastal mangroves would be lost to a rising sea, impacting our commercial fisheries and even our water supply as the ocean pushes westward and north into the Everglades and the Biscayne Aquifer.”

Given this information,  it seems it would give pause to Those Who Would Build Megastructures (you know who you are)  on Virginia Key. 

Probably not.  But that’s another story.....


@2010 All Rights Reserved by Blanca Mesa, View From Virginia Key.

Subscribe to viewfromvirginiakey.com for latest articles on ecology, history and explorations of Virginia Key.  Also on Facebook: join Friends of Virginia Key

Biscayne Bay, Manatees and more at Miami Book Fair

Friends of Virginia Key can get into the conversation about Florida’s wild landscapes at the Miami Book Fair this weekend which features authors discussing books on everything from kayaking across Florida to manatees to an updated handbook on the Everglades. 

The month-long journey included encounters with sharks, pythons and alligators. 

Here’s a session I call “Environment 101.” The authors will speak about their books Sunday, Nov. 21,  12 p.m., Room 7128 (Building 7, 1st Floor) at Miami Dade College Wolfson Campus in downtown Miami. 

Warren Richey -- Without a Paddle: Racing Twelve Hundred Miles Around Florida by Sea Kayak (St. Martin’s Press) is a poignant memoir about Richey’s solitary trip that includes a passage through Biscayne Bay. 

Doug Alderson -- Encounters with Florida's Endangered Wildlife (University Press of Florida) combines natural history with adventure tales while reporting on the fragile environments Florida's indigenous creatures inhabit. 

Tom Lodge -- The Everglades Handbook: Understanding the Ecosystem (CRC Press) explores how the Everglades evolved as an ecosystem and how it has been shaped by natural and man-made forces; features a new chapter on Biscayne Bay.

Craig Pittman -- Manatee Insanity: Inside the War Over Florida's Most Famous Endangered Species (University Press of Florida) provides a history of manatee protection in Florida, including a cast of characters only Florida could produce. Pittman is also the author of Paving Paradise: Florida’s Vanishing Wetlands and the Failure of No Net Loss. 

The Miami Book Fair "Festival of Authors" featuring readings and workshops takes place at the Miami-Dade College Wolfson Campus in downtown Miami Fri., Nov. 19 - Sun., Nov. 21. For more information on all books, fees and directions during the weekend readings, go to miamibookfair.com

@All Rights Reserved by Blanca Mesa

On Facebook, join Friends of Virginia Key

Black Seminole Perspective Featured in History and Cultural Series

The Historic Virginia Key Beach Park Trust will kick off its History and Cultural Lunch Series Friday, Nov. 19,  12 noon to 2 p.m.,  4020 Virginia Beach Drive, Virginia Key with a presentation on Florida’s Black Seminoles by historian Dr. Anthony E. Dixon.

Dixon is the former historian and curator for the Historic Virginia Key Beach Park, which is on the National Register of HIstoric Places.

 “Black Seminoles” is used today to describe the descendants of free blacks and slaves who fled from coastal rice plantations in South Carolina and Georgia into Spanish Florida in the 17th century. Eventually, some traveled down the U.S. peninsula to the reach the last  barrier island of Key Biscayne (past Virginia Key) to board ships bound for the Bahamas and freedom.


 Historian Joan Gill Blank recalls this journey in her book, Key Biscayne: A History of Miami’s Tropical Island and the Cape Florida LIghthouse:

 It is estimated that just before the lighthouse was built at the southern end of Key Biscayne, in the early 1820s, that three hundred brave men and women, with their children, left Cape Florida to take asylum in the Bahamas ....The escapes did not all occur at once. Five years before the lighthouse was illuminated, one traveler reports seeing sixty Indian and sixty runaways and “27 sails of Bahamian wreckers” preparing to leave uninhabited Cape Florida.”

The lecture series is made possible by a grant from the Florida Humanities Council to explore the diverse cultural heritage of Floridians, concentrating on Native Americans, African-Americans, South Americans and the Caribbean. 

@All Rights Reserved by Blanca Mesa
Also on Facebook: Join Friends of Virginia Key.

Habitat Restoration Offers Opportunity to Explore Island Wilds

Wetland restoration in the Historic Virginia Key Beach Park includes construction of boardwalks. 

Extensive environmental restoration of natural areas on Virginia Key is set to begin anew under a federally funded program that has already re-sculpted the island to restore wetlands, dunes and hammock habitat in a 95-acre stretch of the island. 

The aim of the project,  which began in 2002, is to enhance local fish and wildlife resources as it restores the rich biological diversity of the various native habitats on the island.  

One side-benefit:  accessibility.  Where the restoration has been completed, you’ll find scenic trails, wooden bridges and boardwalks that carry you to the heart of wilderness areas. 

Re-sculpting the land includes opening up waterways in the interior of the island. 

Mangrove wetlands, fresh and brackish water ponds, wetlands, hardwood hammocks and coastal strands are part of the restoration.

In the areas where native species have been reestablished or enhanced, you can already see an increase in the numbers of wading birds such as herons and ibis. Migratory birds, including warblers, buntings, vireo and cardinals are seen as well as rare migratory and wintering bird species, including the least tern, great white heron, lesser black-backed gull, peregrine falcon, merlin and brown pelican. The beach areas provide foraging and leafing habitat for shorebirds and nesting habitat for sea turtles.

The multi-million dollar federally-funded program authorized under a section of the Water Resource Development Act of 1986 is directed by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers in partnership with the City of Miami. 

Though the heavy-lifting -- carving out lakes, rebuilding dunes -- has been carried out by professional crews, a lot of the planting has been done by volunteers painstakingly digging and replanting flowering plants, native grasses and trees. 

Volunteers with Urban Paradise Guild plant native grasses. 

“It’s very important to get the community involved,” said restoration specialist Gary Milano,  the biologist with the Miami-Dade Department of Environmental Resources Management who has been directing the restoration effort. “The stewardship component is critical to the project’s success.” 

@All Rights Reserved by Blanca Mesa
Also on Facebook: Friends of Virginia Key 

Explorations by water

Waterplay

A blustery day is perfect for windsurfing on Virginia Key.  Windsurfer's Beach (aka Sewer Beach)  is found just past Jimbo's. At the beach park, you'll find picnic areas, a children's playground and a tropical hammock.  

Kayakers can also  launch off Windsurfer's Beach. Enjoy great views of the restored dunes and tropical hammock on a paddle  along the shoreline towards the Historic Virginia Key Beach Park. Or check out the fossilized mangrove reef  across the cut  at the Bear Cut Preserve in Crandon Park on Key Biscayne. 

@2010 All Rights Reserved by Blanca Mesa

Also on Facebook: Join Friends of Virginia Key