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Posts Tagged ‘Miami hotels’

Within sight of downtown Miami, you’ll see Biscayne National Park, the site of fifty islands of ancient coral reef, established in the late 1960s, about forty years ago, preserved by people who had a unique sense of what a national park might be — one covered by water, one that protected not only islands and the bay, but the reefs.  At first there was opposition to this idea, with some people favoring developing the land for homes, while others insisted on protecting it.  After a prolonged fight, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the bill for the park in October 18th, 1968, creating the Biscayne National Monument to protect terrestrial, amphibious and marine life.
 
Once you’ve settled into one of the Miami hotels, take a ride out to the park and be prepared to experience a world unique to the National Park system, one in which a great deal of the park is best seen underwater.  Here, in a setting of blue-green waters, green islands, and coral reefs, you’ll find proof of ten thousand years of humans living their lives, evidence of pirates and shipwrecks as well as presidents and farmers.
 
The park also offers the Maritime Heritage Trail, which will provide a chance to examine the area’s shipwrecks.  The Shipwreck Trail has six wrecks available to the public, ranging over a hundred years.  You’ll only be able to see these by boat, and they’re best seen by scuba divers, including The Mandalay. 
 
This particular boat was a 128 foot schooner that ran aground on New Year’s Eve in 1966 upon Long Reef next to Elliott Key.  The crew and passengers were all rescued, but The Mandalay was not as fortunate.  The boat was affixed to the reef, hard aground, and looters came pretty quickly to strip the boat.  When tug boats attempted to pull her off the reef, they ripped open the hull even more, and The Mandalay sank.  It rests now in ten feet of water, the best of the wreck dives in Biscayne National Park.  If you’ve ever watched the cable television series about what will happen to the Earth if no people existed upon it, the Mandalay is an excellent example of what happens after over forty years below the waters, with its hull coated with hard corals and sea fans, the home now for schools of fish.