What spot was this, with award-winning beaches and sails flitting like butterflies on the blue-green bay? The Tequesta Indians called the area Bischiyano, “the favorite path of the rising moon.’’ Their bay was stippled with mangroves rather than coral heads, a nursery for marine life rich in stone crabs and yellowtail snapper to this day. Around 1915, William J. Matheson made Key Biscayne his private paradise with a coconut plantation and palatial Moorish-styled retreat. Longtime resident Jean Yahle watched President Nixon come and go in the 1970s from his winter White House near her home.
Today, on land donated by Matheson, Crandon Park blankets the island’s northern third, while the south end is dedicated to Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park. Sandwiched between is Key Biscayne village, where you can dine on $1,000-a-pound white truffles from Alba, Italy, or the all-day breakfast at the Donut Gallery, which has no doughnuts. In a pinch, the local Shell station sells $220 bottles of Dom Pérignon.
It was snowing in Alabama as I pedaled the island’s heritage trail mapped by local historian Joan Gill Blank. The six-mile loop from ocean to bay can fill a day or many, and includes one of the most beautiful bike segments in creation on Crandon Park’s Atlantic shore. Here the palm-shaded sands sweep to the sea, made calm by a sandbar that emerges at low tide. In summer this two-mile segment would be packed with day-trippers from Miami playing volleyball, filling the sky with kites and the water with kayaks. During a shoulder week in January, it was an almost private place in the sun.
Near the park’s beach cabanas, an unmarked left leads to the Quiet Garden. Yahle remembers awakening to the roar of lions when this garden was a zoo. Now the cages stand empty, and peacocks, guinea fowl, and swans roam the 200 fairy tale-like acres. It’s a beautiful excuse to stop and spread the Rokaviar (caviar from farm-raised sturgeon) from the Golden Hog.
