History: The Suburbs – Part Six
In the columns of the past several weeks, wherein we have been notating Miami Beach’s suburbs (which we will continue to do and complete in the next few weeks) several of the SunPost’s readers have asked me about Haulover Beach. Among the excellent questions: What does “Baker’s Haulover” mean? Was there a person named “Baker?” Was today’s Haulover Park always a park? “It looks like there is a paved road east of today’s Collins Avenue. What’s that all about?” “Don’t I remember there being a restaurant there?” And those are all great questions, well worthy of answers, which is what this column is all about.
First, it should be noted that the geographic limits of today’s Haulover Park extend from the north end of the Haulover Bridge (the current four lane bridge was built in 1950 and has been rebuilt and strengthened several times since then) to the south end of Sunny Isles Beach, at approximately 156th Street and Collins Avenue. Interestingly enough, that approximately fifty-block long (north to south) and about one-half to five-eighths of a mile wide (east to west) stretch is physically larger than Indian Creek Village, Surfside, and Bal Harbour Village (individually, not collectively!) and is about the same size as Bay Harbor Islands.
Today exclusively the province of a county park, golf course, marina, fishing boat docks and several franchises on county property, Haulover Beach was once part of North Miami and then North Miami Beach. North Miami lost the property because they could not provide services at a time when access to that area east of the Intracoastal Waterway was available only via either Hollywood Boulevard or the 79th Street Causeway. The Sunny Isles Causeway, built by the legendary Harvey Baker Graves, was not usable much of the time due to flooding and water encroachment.
North Miami Beach, after becoming a city in 1931, did annex all of today’s Haulover Beach Park and Sunny Isles Beach, but, as with North Miami, NMB, at the height of the Depression, had difficulty providing services to the area. Since the beach and bay-sides south of 156th Street were mostly open land the county stepped in and took the property for use as a park, a move which NMB did not contest and which left that city with the property from 156th Street to Golden Beach. Through various political machinations, however, NMB would lose the remainder of its beachfront property (now the City of Sunny Isles Beach) by 1952.
By 1925 the first Haulover Cut bridge was completed, a somewhat rickety wooden crossing of the cut. Interestingly, the original bridge—and its successor crossing—were built almost at ocean’s edge, well east of today’s bridge. The extension of Collins Avenue to the cut had been completed, although, at that time, it was barely wide enough for two cars to pass. But about a block south of the cut the road turned east almost to water’s edge and then turned north to cross the bridge, with the original Sunny Isles Beach Road (the prior name of what would be called Collins Avenue all the way to Golden Beach) being built straight north from there, along the ocean, similar to California’s state highway 101. That road, today used by service vehicles, is still in place.
Next week, the remainder of the fascinating story of Haulover Beach, the trailer park, the Lighthouse Restaurant and the opening of the new bridge concurrent with the re-routing of Collins Avenue.
Category: HISTORY
