Bayfront Park Klipsch Amphitheater

Miami’s beginnings as a city date to the arrival of Henry M. Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway in April 1896. The city incorporated three months later with a population between 700 and 800.
Miami’s first park was on land owned by the railroad and located in front of Flagler’s magnificent Royal Palm Hotel. Called Royal Palm Park, this green space served as the tiny community’s first gathering place, the venue for a wide array of athletic contests, political gatherings, cultural happenings, and religious meetings, including “Sunday Schools” hosted by the former presidential candidate William Jennings Bryant.

Miami’s first park was on land owned by the railroad and locatedin front of Flagler’s magnificent Royal Palm Hotel. Called Royal Palm Park, this green space served as the tiny community’s first gathering place, the venue for a wide array of athletic contests, political gatherings, cultural happenings, and religious meetings. Located on Biscayne Bay (whose waters stretched as far west as today’s Biscayne Boulevard) Royal Palm Park covered an area from SE 2nd Avenue to the bay and from SE 2nd Street to East Flagler and SE 1st Streets. The park contained a pavilion and later a bandshell. A portion of the greenspace was also used as a baseball field, and for track and field events.

Other parks followed, including Lummus Park, northwest of downtown on the Miami River, and Riverside Park, west of the river in the new Riverside neighborhood. Both opened in the early 1910s. In the second decade of the twentieth century, Miami grew faster per capita than any other city in the United States, its population soaring from 5,500 to approximately 30,000 by 1920. Civic leaders began discussing the creation of a large waterfront park on public land, accompanied by a marina and broad boulevard. They envisioned these elements running along the bay from today’s East Flagler Street to the Omni area, 19 blocks to the north.
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