John Collins
The Arc
John Collins was a New Jersey Quaker farmer and horticulturist who came to the barrier island across Biscayne Bay in the early 1900s, well into his sixties, to grow things — avocados, coconuts, and other crops on the sandy, mangrove-fringed land that would one day be Miami Beach. Farming a barrier island is a logistics problem above all, and Collins's great difficulty was getting his produce to the mainland market. His solution was audacious for a man his age: he began building a wooden bridge across the bay, which at roughly two and a half miles would be among the longest of its kind in the world.
He ran out of money before he could finish it. The man who supplied the rest was Carl Fisher, the Indianapolis promoter, who lent Collins the funds in exchange for land and then became the island's relentless developer. The Collins Bridge opened in 1913, connecting the island to the mainland and making everything that followed possible. Collins continued to develop and farm his holdings as Fisher dredged and sold the resort into being around him. He died in 1928, having lived to see the farm he came to plant become one of the most famous resorts in the world.
Why They Matter
Collins is the quiet founder of Miami Beach — the patient agriculturist whose practical problem, getting crops to market, produced the bridge that opened the island. Without the bridge there is no Fisher boom, no Art Deco district, no South Beach. He is a reminder that some of Miami's grandest places began with someone trying to solve an ordinary problem, and that the line between a farmer's access road and a world capital of glamour can be a single wooden bridge.
He also makes a useful pair with Fisher: the modest builder and the grand promoter, the one who made the place reachable and the one who made it famous. Miami tends to remember the promoters; the Collins story is a corrective.
Where You See Them Today
Collins Avenue — the long oceanfront artery running the length of Miami Beach up through Bal Harbour — is his enduring monument, one of the most famous streets in Florida. The Collins Canal and various Collins place-names trace back to him. And the very accessibility of Miami Beach, the thing that made it developable at all, began with his bridge.
Further Reading
- Polly Redford, Billion-Dollar Sandbar: A Biography of Miami Beach
- Howard Kleinberg, Miami Beach: A History
- HistoryMiami Museum collections
Neighborhoods: Miami Beach · Bal Harbour Eras: The 1920s Land Boom Related people: Carl Fisher