Palm Beach to Homestead

Wednesday 6th January 2010

Travelled south today from Palm Beach to Homestead, the town at the north end of the Everglades. Again the sun was shinning brightly and warmly but the wind was still cold.

Our first stop along the way was a place called Boca Rotan. Now a thriving town, it only really prospered after the Second World War. The man responsible for its birth was an architect called Addison Mizner. With the backing of people like the heiress Paris Singer; Van Der Built, Geist, the Duchess of Sunderland and some others that I can’t remember the names of, he built the Boca Rotan Resort and Club, originally the Cloister Club, to lure socialites to his intended city and the most luxurious place to stay in this part of Florida. Mind you, at that time, that would not have been too difficult as the place was mainly swampland with subtropical vegetation and a mosquito population second to none.

Mizner, apparently, had the gift of the gab and not only managed to talk these people into investing but also managed to sell off pieces of land to ordinary folk at something like $1.50 an acre. These pioneering folk came in and cleared the land, drained the swamp and managed to set up a farming community. There were, among others, a Japanese community that grew mainly pineapples, at least until the Cubans undercut their price, and a Native American community who tried to inspire visitors with culture in the form of an 'African' village complete with animals.

Although Flagler had built the East Line railroad, for some reason, he then refused to carry the necessary building materials for Mizner to complete his dream and Mizner died a poor man. The town was rescued by Geist who purchased the Cloister Club and continued to invest a great deal of his own money.

Although many of his plans were not built until after his death and still more were never built at all, Mizner is held in great esteem by the residents. www.bocahistory.org


After this brief visit we continued our journey south to Fort Lauderdale where we stopped for our picnic lunch. Paul found a place called the Hugh Taylor Burch State Recreation Park. Burch was a Chicago attorney who purchased a great deal of ‘sea frontage’ land at a mere $5 an acre because no-one else wanted it. On his death he gifted this land to the nation, hence the State Recreational Park, an oasis of green in an otherwise busy concrete jungle. Although very pleasant to visit, by the time we had eaten, we were both so cold that we jumped back in the car declining the riverside walk that we had both been looking forward to.

We reached Miami South Beach around 3.30 and drove down Ocean Drive where the ‘beautiful’ people hang out and the buildings are Art Deco in style. We were going to stop for a coffee and watch the world go by but parking in this area is no easy feat. Admitting defeat, and not really that desperate to be charged outrageous prices, we continued on and happened to find a ‘public’ car park a mile or so along the road. With only enough change between us to feed the parking meter for 40 mins we decided to walk along Miami South Beach and it was the most crowded we have seen any beach so far. But it was good to get out and stretch our legs and the wind was definitely not as cold.

On returning to the car we debated about continuing along Highway 1 or going out of our way to find a faster road. As the road up till this point had been slow, an average of 35 mph, it did give us a chance to look at the places we were driving through and decided to continue in the same vein. What a mistake. Shortly after returning to Highway 1 we found that highway 95 finished and merged with the 1. It took us nearly an hour to go less than 10 miles, thankfully, the Toyota Corolla is automatic, but we had both lost the will to live by the time we got to the other side of town; we took the next chance to speed up our journey by taking the Florida Freeway and a toll of just $1.