Jump Starts in Redland Florida

Redland,</ref> is a historic unincorporated community and agricultural area in Miami-Dade County, Florida, located about 20 miles (32 km) southwest of downtown Miami and just northwest of Homestead, Florida. It is unique in that it constitutes a large farming belt directly adjoining what is now the seventh most populous major metropolitan area in the United States. Named for the pockets of red clay that cover a layer of oolitic limestone, Redland produces a variety of tropical fruits, many of which do not grow elsewhere in the continental United States. The area also contains a large concentration of ornamental nurseries. The landscape is dotted with u-pick’em fields, coral rock (oolite) walls, and the original clapboard homes of early settlers and other historic early twentieth century structures.

Through the early part of the 20th century, what was known as the “Redland District” – occasionally informally referred to as “the Redlands” or just “the Redland” – encompassed the communities of Homestead, Florida City, Redland, Silver Palm, Modello (now a part of Leisure City), Naranja, Princeton, and Goulds. The “Redland” community included in the Redland District was the area west of S.W. 177th Avenue (Krome Avenue) to the Everglades, south to S.W. 288th Street (Biscayne Drive), and north to S.W. 184th Street (Eureka Drive). The singular “Redland” was purportedly used to make it easier to differentiate the area from the city of Redlands, California.

A smaller-sized community centered around SW 187th Avenue (Redland Road) and SW 264th Street (Bauer Drive) was briefly incorporated as “Redland” in 1910 and then dissolved. Efforts in the 1920s to reincorporate a “town of Redland”—a six-square mile area with proposed borders of SW 280th Street (Waldin Drive) on the south, SW 197th Avenue (Richard Road) on the west, SW 232nd Street (Silver Palm Drive) on the north, and S.W. 177th Avenue (Krome Avenue) on the east—failed when residents could not agree on the precise town limits. Later in the 20th century, people simply began referring informally to the entire agricultural area stretching northwest from (and outside of) the now well-developed Florida City, Homestead, and US 1 corridor as “the Redlands.” Today, there is little consistency in usage. “The Redlands” is used primarily by those from outside the area, “Redland,” “the Redlands,” and “the Redland” are generally used interchangeably, with “Redland” being the more formal and correct usage.

In 1898, John Brinzell became the first settler in southern Dade County, building the first house south of Cutler (now Palmetto Bay) near what is now Silver Palm Drive and SW 157th Avenue (Newton Road). Brinzell acted as a broker locating pioneer settlers on homestead claims in the area. The pioneer homesteaders, living in tents and lean-tos, began clearing and farming their land. Many of the roads that now crisscross Redland bear the names of these pioneers, along with numerical street/avenue designations later assigned by the county. The first harvests were a diverse group of cabbage, carrots, eggplant, beans, and tomatoes. Large-scale farming was impractical, however, because the red, iron-rich soil that gave the area its name could only be found in scattered “potholes” that, at their largest, were only an acre in size. To grow fruit trees, farmers first had to dynamite holes in the oolite rock.

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