Click on "original" below to view the largest version of this image. My reference to NAS (Naval Air Station) Miami at Opa-locka Airport is so people know where it is now. It did not become Opa-locka Airport until the federal government gave most of the property (excluding what is now Coast Guard Air Station Miami) to Dade County and then Opa-locka Airport was born. Until then the property was known as Naval Air Station Miami and Marine Corps Air Station Miami after the Navy pulled out. We kids growing up in northwest Hialeah just called it the "government property" because of the chain link fence with barbed wire on top that was around it with "U. S. Government Property" signs on it. Other Naval Air Station Miami/Marine Corps Air Station Miami property on the south end was given to Dade County for use as a regional park (now Amelia Earhart Regional Park thanks to State Senator Ernest Graham's efforts and a large chuck of the southwest corner was auctioned off in sections by the federal government's General Services Administration to various developers with the highest bids. The auctioned off federal property was along NW 119th Street (W 65th Street) from W. 2nd Avenue to W. 4th Avenue (Red Road / NW 57th Avenue) and northward to where the Gratigny Expressway is now. The City of Hialeah annexed the land and it became developed in the early 1970's with apartment houses, the Lovell Brothers "Palm Springs Estates" townhouse development, warehouses and offices to the north of that development and restaurants and gas stations all along Red Road.
What was the name of the pretty girl who lived on the northeast corner of W. 8th Court and W. 64th Street where the red question mark is? I knew her in April/May 1966 before I went off into the USCG and I saw her again after Christmas Eve Mass at Immaculate Conception in 1968 and we had numerous long-distance telephone conversations after that. I flew down from Tampa on a weekend in January 1969 to go out with her but she had to babysit a neighbor's kids because the neighbor was in the hospital having a baby. That was a bad sign for me and I stupidly stopped calling her. She would have graduated from Hialeah High in 1968 or 1969, probably 1969. I've lost her name over the years but her home was at 6417 W. 8th Court, Hialeah.