Biscayne National Park is an American national park in southern Florida, south of Miami. The park preserves Biscayne Bay and its offshore barrier reefs. Ninety-five percent of the park is water, and the shore of the bay is the location of an extensive mangrove forest. The keys are covered with tropical vegetation including endangered cacti and palms.
About Biscayne National Park in brief
Biscayne National Park is an American national park in southern Florida, south of Miami. The park preserves Biscayne Bay and its offshore barrier reefs. Ninety-five percent of the park is water, and the shore of the bay is the location of an extensive mangrove forest. The keys are covered with tropical vegetation including endangered cacti and palms, and their beaches provide nesting grounds for endangered sea turtles. Offshore reefs and waters harbor more than 200 species of fish, pelagic birds, whales and hard corals. Sixteen endangered species including Schaus’ swallowtail butterflies, smalltooth sawfish, manatees, and green and hawksbill sea turtles may be observed in the park. The people of the Glades culture inhabited the Biscayne Bay region as early as 10,000 years ago before rising sea levels filled the bay. The Tequesta people occupied the islands and shoreline from about 4,000 years before the present to the 16th century, when the Spanish took possession of Florida. The area remained undeveloped until the 1960s, when a series of proposals were made to develop the keys in the manner of Miami Beach, and to construct a deepwater seaport for bulk cargo, along with refinery and petrochemical facilities. A backlash against development led to the 1968 designation of Biscaynne National Monument. The preserved area was expanded by its 1980 re-designation as Biscayanne National Park. The eastern boundary is the ten-fathom line of water in the Atlantic Ocean on the Florida Reef.
The western boundary is a few hundred hundred meters on the mainland, extending a few property on the property of a property on a few islands north of the Ragged Keys. The Florida Reef is one of the largest coral reefs in the world. Apart from the park’s visitor center on themainland, its land and sea areas are accessible only by boat. In the early 20th century the islands became secluded destinations for wealthy Miamians who built getaway homes and social clubs. The amphibious community of Stiltsville, established in the 1930s, took advantage of its remoteness from land to offer offshore gambling and alcohol during Prohibition. After the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the Central Intelligence Agency and Cuban exile groups used Elliott Key as a training ground for infiltrators into Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Extending southward to just south of Key Largo, the park includes Soldier Key, Ragged Key, Totten Key, Old Key, and Rhodes Key, as well as smaller islands that form the northern extension of the Florida Keys. It also includes Elliott Key, the largest island and northernmost of the true Florida Keys, formed from fossilized coral reef. It is located in Miami-Dade County in southeast Florida, in the Miami suburb of Miami- suburb of Doral. It’s located on the eastern edge of the Miami Beach metropolitan area, just south south of Largo.
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This page is based on the article Biscayne National Park published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 15, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
