Rock Pits to River Parks: The CCC’s Legacy in North Miami Beach
As we celebrate the United States’ 250th anniversary, the America250 initiative invites us to honor the workers who turned industrial wastelands into public parks. At Oleta River State Park, a proud member of the Adventures Unbound family, we are recognizing the Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees who built the parks surrounding North Miami Beach’s waterways, establishing the green corridor that makes paddling the Oleta River the experience it is today.
Transforming Abandoned Quarries into Parks
Less than three miles from what is now Oleta River State Park, the CCC performed one of its most dramatic transformations in South Florida. In the mid-1930s, A.O. Greynolds donated 110 acres of former Ojus Rock Company land, a landscape of abandoned rock pits and industrial scars. CCC workers, including World War I veterans and unemployed teenagers, arrived to build Greynolds Park between 1936 and 1939. Under the direction of landscape architect William Lyman Phillips, a student of the Olmsteds, the corps transformed the quarry into a park. They constructed roads, cleared grounds, dug lagoons and a harbor, laid limestone walls, planted trees, and built picnic tables and shelters. Greynolds Park was designated a historic site by the Miami-Dade County Historic Preservation Board in 1983.
The CCC built a network of Dade County parks during the same period. At Matheson Hammock Park, work began in 1935 with corps members building a causeway through mangroves, constructing coral stone structures, digging lagoons, and creating a wading beach. Phillips designed both parks, joining the CCC project in 1933 and serving until 1941. A.D. Barnes, the Dade County parks superintendent, served as procurement officer for two CCC camps in the county, coordinating the workforce that built South Florida’s public park system.
Paddling the CCC’s Green Corridor
Today, Oleta River State Park sits in the middle of a landscape the CCC helped create. When you paddle the Oleta River or mountain bike through the park’s mangrove trails, the surrounding green spaces, the forested shorelines, the very concept that North Miami Beach deserves public parks amid the development, all connect to the CCC’s vision for Dade County in the 1930s. Greynolds Park, just up the road, stands as living proof of what the corps accomplished.
To learn more about how we are celebrating the diverse stories behind America’s national heritage, visit America250 at Adventures Unbound.