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.