Members of the Dolphins organization take tour looking back at the history of Miami’s skyline

MIAMI – Members of the Dolphins organization are spending the offseason studying extra about the wealthy history of the Miami space.

It’s half of an effort to be extra intentional and higher ambassadors of the 305.  

Tuesday, Dolphins workers and cheer workforce members chartered a personal boat with HistoryMiami Museum for a lesson about improvement from Biscayne Bay to Stiltsville.  

“Miami is known as a colorful vibrant city, there’s a lot of Hispanic culture here, I’m happy to be Hispanic myself so that’s what I think of when I think of Miami,” Dolphins cheerleader Stephani Capon mentioned.

And even a lifelong South Floridian like Capon was shocked by some of the particulars emerged from early days of Miami.  In reality, when European settlers arrived in the 1500s, the inhabitants of space had been half of the Teqeusta Tribe of Native Americans.

“We didn’t come out of nowhere, it took place over the period of many years, generations of people. It’s always been a magnet of people from somewhere else, either from the North, or from Cuba, or from Central America, we’ve always been a place for starting over again,” HistoryMiami Museum historian Paul George mentioned. 

And for a lot of time the space was a subtropical wetland. Then, about 200 years in the past, improvement started selecting up pace, and a few of that history is shameful.

“There’s a part of this that’s not so much play play,” Dinizulu Gene Tinnie, a professor of humanities, defined.

That’s as a result of African American labor remodeled the wildland right into a metropolis, however for many years racist polices stored them segregated.  Things progressed after World War II and extra so after the Civil Rights Movement.

“The county had committed to making Virginia Key Beach as close to being separate and equal, that’s how the law read, as Crandon Park,” he defined of separate however equal legal guidelines insurance policies,” Tinnie said. 

That’s part of the reason why Virginia Key is still preserved today. 

The tour ended with a closeup look at wooden stilt homes out near Cape Florida. At one time 27 homes stood.  Over the years some have been lost to hurricanes, and now only six stand. 

Looking back, Ashley Armour, a Special Olympics senior manager, was surprised by the local connection to the underground railroad.  

“I believed that the lighthouse piece was very informative, being half of the underground railroad,” she mentioned. 

Some slaves used it at the earlier than slavery was abolished to assist navigate their option to the Bahamas for freedom.

The Consul General of Israel in Miami was additionally invited, he walked away with a deeper connection to the previous. 

“What we see now is the skyscrapers of the skyline of Miami but just to think about this tropical jungle that used to be no man’s land and we learn to appreciate it,” he mentioned. 

Dozens on board shared the identical sentiment. 

“I think my favorite quote from the day was that we influence the environment and in turn, the environment influences human history,” Capon added. 

Past excursions included a go to to the Seminole Tribe in Big Cypress, whereas in the future the organization will head out to check components of the intercoastal water in Broward County.