Highleyman

Miami’s Yester’Years and Its Forgotten Founder, Locke Tiffin Highleyman begins by looking at Florida’s past as a state, then turning the focus to southern Florida and the development of Miami. In 1904, Locke Highleyman traveled to Miami and saw its potential. In 1911, he moved his family there to settle and help develop the area creating the first dredged islands in Biscayne Bay. To do this, Locke T. Highleyman first sucked up enough mud to fill Point View. In the beginning, he was considered crazy. But Point View turned a profit. He then began pumping up the bay bottom to build Palm and Hibiscus Islands. Everyone still said he was daft, but doubts began to creep in when all the lots were sold before they were even there. By the early ’20s, the new Biscayne Bay was offering gracious, tropical island lots for the wealthy. Taking a wilderness and turning it into a site of Paradise, this is the story of an era, an area, and a vision of Miami and its forgotten founder, Locke Tiffin Highleyman.