It’s time for Florida to dig its oldest landmark out of the grave

More than 25 years ago, Miami Today reporter Marilyn Bowden revealed that an archaeologist’s dig at the mouth of the Miami River had uncovered a stone structure. Six months later the Miami Circle turned into a national sensation that everyone waited to see. Two weeks ago, we reported that parking is still lacking to get visitors to the site, where they still can’t see Miami’s most ancient structure because the state buried it again.

What lies buried there in its poorly marked and nearly forgotten historical grave is a 38-foot-diameter stone circle almost 2,000 years old created by the Tequesta, who as best we know were Miami’s first residents. Buried with it is a totally untapped potential, a visitor attraction that is not only one of Miami’s 79 Historic Places but one of its six Historic National Landmarks designated by the National Park Service.

Directories tell visitors details of the circle and numerous archaeological artifacts found there, including shell tools and stone axe heads. For visitors interested in culture and history it is a must see – if it were both visible and accessible. It is neither.

The state bought the 2.5-acre site for $26.7 million to save the priceless historic and cultural artifact and then buried it again under layers of limestone to protect it rather than displaying either the circle or a replica. There is no full historic and cultural display of Miami’s first residents. 

The state found the money to buy the site but not to do anything with it – much as the City of Miami built a unique fountain in nearby Bayfront Park that it could not properly operate so it tore the mechanism apart.

In a community that serves European visitors who hunger to view our history much as American tourists thirst to look at theirs, we are literally throwing away dollars as well as cultural impact by continuing to hide a unique focus of United States and Florida history. 

Visitors who come to the Brickell area because they found the Miami Circle in directories of historic sites will be met with blank stares if they ask condo dwellers or office workers where the historic site is. Residents who are aware of the location mostly think of the land as a dog-walking park – and use it just that way. 

The Miami Circle thus is the only historic site in the nation that has more canine visitors than humans.

Actually, the downtown area has two national historic landmarks. The other is the Freedom Tower, which next year amidst celebrations yet to be unveiled will be honored as it reopens after a state-funded $25 million renovation.

The Freedom Tower is indeed historic. It was built to house Miami’s first newspaper, The Miami Daily News. But the state funding was in recognition of its later use as the welcoming beacon to refugees arriving from Cuba and getting aid there. Both uses had significant historic impact.

While the state has funded renovation of the tower that is now part of Miami Dade College and the museums inside, it inexplicably has left its other historic downtown landmark to fend for itself. If it found $25 million for the tower, it should do the same for the Miami Circle. 

Since the Miami Circle was discovered, archaeologists across the river on its north bank uncovered in eight years of work more than 100,000 artifacts, including 11 smaller circles. Nearby work on the south bank has uncovered much in addition that the Tequesta left behind. Some of those artifacts sit in the HistoryMiami Museum downtown.

But there is no site devoted to Miami’s earliest settlers and no way to view the grandest find, the Miami Circle. There first was talk of sheltering the artifact in a protective building under glass. A decade ago there was talk of a 3-D replica of the circle above ground.

Now, after the state has funded its $25 million Freedom Tower recognition of the culture and vital impact of the Cuban presence in Miami, is the time to look after the neighboring Miami Circle and the unrecognized arrival of Miami’s first permanent residents.

After all, it’s the state itself that bought the site of the Miami Circle and continues to totally neglect it, leaving the historic story untold and the world thinking that Florida’s history began after Columbus, not at least a millennium earlier.

Who will file a Miami Circle funding bill for the next session of the Florida Legislature to make the state’s oldest cultural treasure visible to us all at last?