OF THE ARRIVAL OF CARL FISHER IN MIAMI--OF FISHER’S FEVERISH IMAGINATION
AND VIOLENT DREAMS--OF THE DESPAIR OF FISHER’S FRIENDS--AND OF THE
EVOLUTION OF A JUNGLE
Early in 1913, a wealthy Indianapolis business man named Carl G. Fisher
came to Miami for his health. Fisher, from the days when he used to be a
news butcher on Indiana trains, was able to see the possibilities in
things which every one else regarded as impossibilities. He had always
plunged heavily on his beliefs while his friends and acquaintances stood
on the side-lines and told one another what a shame it was that Carl had
gone bugs. One of his plunges had been the big Indianapolis Speedway--a
gigantic structure which does all its business, pays its expenses and
makes its profits on one day out of the year.
Collins, unable to complete his bridge alone, went to Fisher and asked
him for assistance. Fisher, with his ever-present willingness to take a
chance, supplied Collins with the necessary funds to finish the job,
taking in return a large and unprepossessing slice of the long, narrow,
jungle-grown sand-spit that shut Miami off from the sea. He immediately
began to take a passionate interest in that desolate piece of real
estate. In his feverish mind’s eye he saw it covered with the greatest
winter resort of modern times--with acres of beautiful homes, and hotels
bowered in towering palms and scarlet-flowered hibiscus; with polo
fields and golf links and tennis courts and ice-rinks: with lagoons and
canals and artificial islands and Venetian gondolas: with casinos and
bath-houses and outdoor swimming pools that would outdo anything in
America or Europe.
He let himself go with the utmost enthusiasm, and kept his imagination
working on a twenty-two-hour day. His friends gave up all hope for him.
“Poor Fisher!” they murmured privately behind his back. “Poor Fisher has
gone completely loco. We must make arrangements to put him away
quietly.”
After he had dreamed a few of his more violent dreams, he went out to
the sand-spit to look it over more carefully and decide definitely where
to put a few of the hotels and casinos. Around its shores he found a
solid wall of mangroves whose interlaced roots rose several feet out of
the water in such a confused and slimy jumble that any appreciable
progress through them was a matter of hours. So he got a gang of twelve
negroes and set them to work hacking a hole all the way through this
jungle. Beyond the mangrove swamp was a solidly interlaced growth of
cabbage palms and palmettos through which no human being could force a
passage without tearing his clothes and his skin to shreds. The palm and
palmetto growth filled every part of his property except the
shores--and the shores were overgrown with mangroves.
Greatly cheered and stimulated by these obstacles, he promptly set to
work on his scheme to build, almost overnight, America’s greatest winter
resort. Starting at the extreme tip of the tongue, his gangs of laborers
cleared off the mangroves, cabbage palms, palmettos and other scrub.
They found bear in it, and panther and countless numbers of smaller
animals, and quail by the thousands. Then along the edges of the tongue
they built high cement bulkheads. As the bulkheads were finished,
dredgers pumped sand and water out of Biscayne Bay and inside the
bulkheads. The water ran off, but the sand remained and turned the
swamps and marshes into solid land. This work required dredging crews of
one hundred and fifty men, three pumping boats, two digging boats, from
ten to fifteen barges, five supply boats, two oil tugs, two anchor boats
and an eighteen-inch pipe line over a mile in length. For eight months
the pay roll was four thousand dollars a day, and Fisher’s friends daily
became more insistent that he be locked up where he could no longer
throw his money into the Atlantic Ocean.
Canals and inland waterways were dug so that future residents might have
easy access to all portions of the resort by yacht, house-boat and
motor-boat. Palms, hibiscus and tropical plants and vines slowly crept
along in the rear of the dredging operations. Fifty acres were turned
into polo fields. Three hundred and twenty-five acres were set aside for
golf courses. Three excellent golf courses were made, two at a cost of
two hundred thousand dollars apiece, and one at a cost of a quarter
million.
To-day, the tongue of land that was an impenetrable jungle in 1913 and a
waste of sand in 1917, has become the city of Miami Beach. Its value has
grown from twelve thousand to twenty million. There may be some to
question the latter figure; but the accessed value of Miami Beach
property in 1921 was $5,540,112; and unimproved property was being
assessed at one-quarter of its valuation, while improved property was
being assessed at one-tenth of its valuation. It has a frontage of six
miles on the ocean, seven miles on Biscayne Bay, and sixteen miles on
inland waterways and canals--though a Miami Beach enthusiast would no
more think of listing Miami Beach property in miles than a jeweler would
think of listing diamonds in quarts. It is too precious. He lists it in
feet, and tells you that the frontage on inland waterways is eighty-five
thousand feet. In a few years, if he progresses in the future as he has
in the past, he’ll probably be listing it in inches.