50 Fun Facts About Biscayne National Park

Biscayne National Park is in which US state?

It sits just south of Miami, running from just below Key Biscayne down to just north of Key Largo.

Roughly what share of the park's 173,000 acres is dry land?

Only 9,075 acres are land, split between the offshore keys and the mainland mangrove fringe; everything else is bay and reef.

Elliott Key is the park's largest island. Which is second, at about 660 acres?

Elliott Key itself is about 8 miles long and less than a mile wide; Sands Key and Totten Key follow at 420 and 380 acres.

How many islands lie within the park boundaries?

They run in a north–south line 5 to 9 miles off the mainland, shifting from sandy barrier islands in the north to coral rock platforms in the south.

The park's offshore waters hold the northern end of which coral system, one of the largest in the world?

Reefs cover about half the park, with some 4,000 individual patch reefs; elkhorn coral dominates the shallows and staghorn below about 10 metres.

How many distinct ecosystems does the park protect?

Mangrove shoreline, the shallow bay, the coral limestone keys and the offshore reef; the mangrove nurseries feed the whole system.

Which people occupied the islands and shoreline for about 4,000 years until the Spanish arrived?

They lived on fish and shellfish with no real farming; Ponce de León called the bay 'Chequescha' after them in 1513.

The name Biscayne is often traced to a shipwrecked sailor from which region of Spain?

The 'Biscaino' or 'Viscayno' lived in the area for a time; the alternative theory is a general allusion to the Bay of Biscay.

How many documented shipwrecks lie within the park?

They span the 16th to 20th centuries; 43 are listed on the National Register as the Offshore Reefs Archeological District.

The 1975 discovery of which 1748 Royal Navy wreck led to a ruling that it was an archaeological site, not salvage?

It lies in Legare Anchorage, some way from the reef that carries its name and its iron lighthouse.

The Maritime Heritage Trail in the park is unique in the National Park Service system. Why?

Snorkelers and divers visit wrecks including the Arratoon Apcar, Erl King, Alicia, Lugano and the shallow Mandalay (1966).

Two 18th-century pirates who reputedly used Elliott Key as a base shared what name?

A creek named for them separates Elliott Key from the island to its south.

Which famous bird artist visited Elliott Key in 1832?

Robert E. Lee surveyed the bay for fort sites in 1849, and fleeing Confederates passed through on the way to Cuba in 1865.

Which former US vice president spent two nights in Biscayne Bay in 1865 while fleeing to Cuba?

He had been James Buchanan's vice president before becoming a Confederate general and secretary of war.

Israel Lafayette Jones, who bought Porgy Key in 1897, built one of the east coast's biggest plantations growing what?

He bought Totten Key for a dollar an acre in 1911 and sold it for $250,000 in 1925; his sons later became fishing guides to senators and presidents.

What did Lancelot Jones keep when he became the first Elliott Key landowner to sell to the Park Service?

He got $1,272,500, about a third of the development value, at age 70; he stayed on Porgy Key in a two-room shack until just before the 1992 hurricane and died in 1997 aged 99.

Which Miami Beach developer built the Cocolobo Cay Club on Adams Key in 1922?

Guests included Warren Harding, Harvey Firestone, Jack Dempsey and Will Rogers; the 1929 crash cost him his fortune and Garfield Wood revived the club in 1934.

How many US presidents visited the Cocolobo Cay Club over the years?

Harding was a member; Hoover fished with the Joneses; Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon all came as senators when Bebe Rebozo owned the place.

What happened to Bebe Rebozo in 1972 that made him urge Nixon to fire Park Service director George Hartzog?

Nixon replaced Hartzog with his head of travel arrangements, who admitted he did not know the Park Service from the Boy Scouts.

In the early 1960s the CIA used Elliott Key to train Cuban exiles for what?

The main facility was Ledbury Lodge, the only hotel ever built on the key; exiles were still trying to stage mock landings there in 1988.

Which exiled Venezuelan president kept a house on Soldier Key until his extradition in 1963?

The dictator had fled Caracas in 1958; the northern keys were a favourite hideaway for the rich and the wanted alike.

In 1960 landowners on Elliott Key incorporated a city to push for development. What was it called?

Twelve of eighteen landowners voted it into being to lobby for a causeway; only landowners could vote, which is why Janet Reno's office ruled every election invalid in 1990.

What did the paper city's supporters do to Elliott Key in 1968 to spoil it as a monument site?

'Elliott Key Boulevard', privately called Spite Highway, destroyed 7 miles of forest; it grew back and the island's only real trail follows it today.

What was the 1962 bay-shore seaport and refinery proposal backed by shipping magnate Daniel Ludwig called?

It would have needed a 40-foot channel dredged through the bay and cut through the reef; environmentalists formed the Safe Progress Association to stop it.

Which president signed the law creating Biscayne National Monument in October 1968?

Congressman Dante Fascell and Herbert Hoover Jr. had championed it; the visitor center at Convoy Point now bears Fascell's name.

In which year was the monument expanded and redesignated a national park?

The expansion pushed the boundary almost to Key Biscayne and took in the Ragged Keys and the Safety Valve shoals.

Biscayne Bay was originally meant to be part of which other national park?

Ernest Coe's early Everglades plan also included Key Largo and the land where Homestead now stands; the trimming secured consensus in 1947.

What is the shack community on pilings in the northern bay called?

'Crawfish' Eddie Walker started it in the 1930s, selling bait, beer and a crawfish chowder called chilau; gambling was legal a mile offshore.

At its 1960s peak, how many structures stood in the stilt-shack community?

Fires and hurricanes whittled them down; only six survived by 2021, none older than the 1960s, and a trust now looks after them.

Which 1992 hurricane destroyed most of the stilt shacks and drove the last resident off Porgy Key?

It also wrecked Homestead Air Force Base next door, prompting a plan for a commercial airport whose flight paths the Air Force blocked in 1999 to protect the park.

Which industrialist bought a key in 1937 and topped his private retreat with an ornamental lighthouse?

The 65-foot tower is coral rock topped with a wire cage that mimics a lantern; he and his wife Olive also built a chapel and guesthouse.

What is the most-visited island in the park?

It has a campground and picnic areas but no fresh water or electricity; the fake lighthouse opens when staffing allows.

The Fowey Rocks Light, a cast-iron skeleton tower acquired by the park in 2012, was completed in which year?

It replaced an older light on Key Biscayne and marks the entrance to Hawk Channel; workers lived on a platform over the water while building it.

Which power station, with its cooling canals, adjoins the park's southwestern boundary?

Its oil-fired units killed seagrass with hot water in the late 1960s; two nuclear reactors followed, and the warm canals became a nursery for American crocodiles.

Why are American crocodiles more common than alligators in the park?

Alligators mostly stay in fresh water farther inland; the threatened crocodiles nest along the park margins.

Which endangered butterfly of Elliott Key was down to five individuals in a 2012 park survey?

That prompted a captive-breeding programme; the Miami blue, feared extinct after 1992, was rediscovered on Bahia Honda Key in 1999.

Which sea turtle accounts for nearly all the nests on the park's beaches?

Rangers screen nests with mesh against raccoons; before that, predators disturbed 100 percent of nests some years.

The only natural population of which rare tree grows on Elliott Key?

Fewer than 50 grew there in 1991 and just 16 remain, with about 123 propagated on Long Key.

What is the average depth of Biscayne Bay?

It is a shallow semi-enclosed lagoon; the park's eastern edge is the 60-foot ten-fathom line out on the reef.

The Key Largo Limestone under Elliott Key is a fossilised coral reef that formed roughly how long ago?

It dates to the Sangamonian interglacial; because they were reefs, the beaches of the southern keys are rocky, and only Sands Key has real sand.

The mangrove forest on Biscayne Bay holds what record within the state?

Red and black mangroves grow from the water with white mangroves behind; the swamp sequesters two to three times as much carbon as a land forest.

Which hard-to-see bird has one of its largest populations in the state at Convoy Point and Black Point?

Bald eagles and ospreys nest in the park, and both white-tailed and red-tailed tropicbirds turn up offshore.

Which holiday weekend has been called the park's 'most dangerous weekend of the year' for boaters?

An annual regatta held just outside the park sent revellers to Elliott Key and caused six deaths between 2002 and 2011.

Apart from the mainland visitor center, how can visitors reach the rest of the park?

The Dante Fascell Visitor Center at Convoy Point is the sole land access; personal watercraft such as jet skis are banned.

The park's mainland visitor center at Convoy Point is named after which Florida congressman?

The site was once a segregated 'blacks-only' beach run by the county's Homestead Bayfront Park.

Which shack-builder in 1933 allegedly set up his stilt house to host gambling one mile offshore?

He sold bait and beer from the shack in the last days of Prohibition and was famed for a crawfish chowder.

Which magazine's February 1941 article made Stiltsville's Quarterdeck Club a must-see attraction?

Built on a barge, the club was raided for gambling in 1949, wrecked by Hurricane Donna in 1960 and burned down in 1961.

Roughly what maximum sustained wind speed did Hurricane Andrew have when it crossed the park in 1992?

The compact Category 5 storm pushed a surge up to 17 feet above sea level and came ashore just south of Miami on August 24.

Which Everglades advocate first proposed protecting Biscayne Bay as part of a national park?

His proposed Everglades boundaries took in the bay, its keys and Key Largo; the bay was later dropped to get the Everglades park established.

Which state attorney's office ruled in 1990 that all of Islandia's town elections were invalid?

The paper city had lingered after the monument's creation; hiring a police chief in 1989 finally prompted the Park Service to ask questions.