Miami Circle, Miami, Florida - Dixie Highway on Waymarking.com

Public pressure helped preserve the Miami Circle, which is separated from the gravesites by the 18-story Sheraton Biscayne Bay hotel along Hwy. 1--Dixie Highway. In November 2001, the Ramada hotel manager unlocked a large conference room so I could take photographs from the terrace. The Ramada, located on the north side of the mouth of the Miami River, has since been torn down.

The state of Florida and Miami-Dade County bought the two-acre Miami Circle tract for $26.7 million after the 38-foot limestone ring was discovered September 1998 when one apartment complex was torn down to make room for a bigger, high-rise one. Archaeologists believe the 2,000-year-old Tequesta Indian ring was the base of a large building, but are not sure what its purpose was. The capital village of the Tequesta was at the mouth of the Miami River and that it was occupied for centuries if not thousands of years.

In the spring of 2001, an ancient Indian burial ground was discovered nearby on a prime piece of real estate. The graves--part of the 2,000-year-old Tequesta Indian cemetery--sits in a shady little bayfront 2 1/2 acre park on one of the last undeveloped spots along Brickell Avenue (Hwy. 1--Dixie Highway). The graves were discovered as Miami sought to sell the park to developers who planned to put up a high-rise. Archaeologists believe that the Indians buried there were the same ones who built the Miami Circle, the mysterious stone ring discovered two years previously. "With modernization, it's really a miracle that any part of it survived," said Bob Carr, one of the archaeologists who made the find.

Instructions for logging waymark: A photograph is required of you (or your GPS receiver, if you are waymarking solo) and the place--Miami Circle or the cemetery/park.