Overview: Before bikinis, high-rises, and neon hotels, Miami Beach was a swamp—an uninhabitable chain of mangrove-covered barrier islands plagued by mosquitoes and flooding. Labeled “impossible lands” in the 1800s, the area was transformed in the early 1900s by developers who drained wetlands, dredged sand, and reshaped nature itself to build a coastal paradise. Visionary developer … Continue reading How Miami Beach Was Engineered Into Existence