Biscayne National Park - Human History

Human History

Native Americans were present in lower Florida 10,000 years ago, when ocean levels were low and Biscayne Bay was empty of water. Archeologists believe that any traces left by the peoples of that era are now submerged.; none now exists on dry lands in the park. The earliest evidence of human use in Biscayne dates to about 2500 years before the present, with piles of conch and whelk shells left by the Glades culture. Over time the Glades culture differentiated so that the Tequesta tribe occupied the shores of Biscayne Bay. The Tequesta were a sedentary community living on fish and other sea life, with no significant agricultural activity. Spanish explorers arrived in the area in the 16th-century and Florida came under Spanish rule. The Tequesta were resettled by the then-Spanish government in the Florida Keys, beginning in 1704, and the area was depopulated.

Spanish treasure fleets regularly sailed past the Florida Keys and were often caught in hurricanes. At least two 18th-century Spanish ships were wrecked in the park area. During the early 18th-century, Elliott Key was the reputed base of the pirate Black Caesar, commemorated by Caesar's Creek between Elliott and Old Rhodes Key. Caesar left Elliott Key to join the pirate Blackbeard's crew.

The first permanent European settlers in the Miami area did not come until the early 19th-century. Small farmers grew crops like key limes and pineapples on Elliott Key. John James Audubon visited Elliott Key in 1832. Few people lived in the park area until 1897, when Israel Lafayette Jones, an African-American property manager, bought Porgy Key for $300 US. The next year Jones bought the adjoining Old Rhodes Key and moved his family there, clearing land to grow The Jones plantations were among the largest lime producers on the Florida east coast. Israel Jones died in 1932.

Carl G. Fisher, who was responsible for much of the development of Miami Beach, bought Adams Key in 1916 and built the Cocolobo Cay Club in 1922, named for the native pigeon plum (coccoloba diversifolia). The two-story club building had ten guest rooms, a dining room, and a separate recreation lodge. Members included Warren G. Harding, Albert Fall, T. Coleman DuPont, Harvey Firestone, Jack Dempsey, Charles F. Kettering, Will Rogers and Frank Seiberling. Israel Jones' sons Lancelot and Arthur dropped out of the lime-growing business after competition from Mexican limes and a series of devastating hurricanes in 1938, when they became full-time fishing guides at the Coco Lobo Club. The club had declined with the crash of 1929 which cost Fisher his fortune, but was revived by Garfield Wood in 1934. Among their clients was avid fisherman Herbert Hoover and his family. The Joneses also provided the club with fish, lobster and crabs. Arthur and Lancelot Jones were the second largest landowners and the only permanent residents of the lower Biscayne Bay keys during the 1960s.

Wood sold the Cocolobo Cay Club to Bebe Rebozo and Sloane McCray in 1954, who renamed it the Coco Lobo Fishing Club. Clients guided by the Joneses included then-senators John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Herman Talmadge and George Smathers through the 1940s and 1950s.