Though the Historic Virginia Key Beach Park celebrates its 65th anniversary today, the area of Virginia Key officially designated in 1945 as a “colored” beach” actually had been recognized for decades prior as a recreational area for African Americans.
It was known as “Bear’s Cut,” now the name of the waterway that divides Virginia Key from Key Biscayne.
In fact, a 1918 survey map shows the location of a “Negro Dacing Pavilion” at the site of the current day Historic Virginia Key Beach Park.
The late City of Miami Commissioner Athalie Range, who was instrumental in creating the Virginia Key Park Trust that spearheaded the 2008 restoration of the park, recalled visiting the island during the Depression:
I’m among the very few who remembers the 1930’s. Where there was not a Virginia Key Beach, there was a place on the island which was called Bear’s Cut. And, this was the only place that blacks could actually go to swim, or were permitted to go to swim without interference from the law or others who saw us there. These were the days early on when fishermen who went out to make their living would take families or small picnics, church gatherings over to Bear’s cut for a picnic.
At the time there were no facilities - fresh water, bathrooms, picnic tables or lifeguards - and no way to get back to the mainland except with the same fishermen who would return at the end of the day.
By the 1950’s, the park was in its heyday, where weddings, baptisms and church picnics happened, and day cabanas and rental cottages were available, as well as a new dance pavilion, recalling the turn of the century structure marked in those early survey maps.
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