The Miami Marine Stadium was named after Commodore Ralph Middleton Munroe, a yacht designer and early Coconut Grove resident who some consider Miami’s earliest "environmentalist." He loved Biscayne Bay, fought fiercely for it, and spent his years in South Florida sailing and photographing it. His Coconut Grove home, the oldest house in Miami-Dade still in its original location, is part of the Barnacle Historic State Park.
Munroe described the beauty of Biscayne Bay in the era before developer Henry Flagler came to town, in his autobiography, The Commodore’s Story: The Early Days on Biscayne Bay:
No sea-lover could look unmoved on the blue rollers of the Gulf Stream and the crystal-clear waters of the Reef, of every delicate shade of blue and green, and tinged with every color of the spectrum from the fantastically rich growths on the bottom, visible to the last details through this incredibly translucent medum. It scarcely resembles northern seawater at all - a cool, semi-opaque, grayish-green fluid, which hides the mysteries of the bottom. Drifting over the Florida Reef on a quiet day one may note all the details of its tropical luxuriance twenty feet below, and feels himself afloat on a sort of liquid light, rather than water, so limpid and brilliant is it.
Photos 1-2
Kayaking in Biscayne Bay in the waters off Virginia Key (credit: Coki Michel)
Ralph Middleton Munroe
For more info:
http://www.dep.state.fl.us/coastal/sites/biscayne/
http://www.floridastateparks.org/TheBarnacle/
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