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Don Boyd | all galleries >> Memories of Old Hialeah, Old Miami and Old South Florida Photo Galleries - largest non-Facebook collection on the internet >> 1950 to 1959 Miami Area Historical Photos Gallery - click on image to view > 1954 - Aerial view of the Golden Glades Interchange looking west
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1954

1954 - Aerial view of the Golden Glades Interchange looking west

Over the Golden Glades Interchange, Dade County, Florida


Opa-locka Naval Air Station is at the upper left in the background. State Road 9 runs from the middle left bottom up the left edge. NW 167th Street runs from the interchange up through the left middle of the photo. The east-west leg of the Palmetto Expressway (SR 826) won't be built for another 4 or 5 years. Development north of NW 167th Street is minimal and Opa-locka still has vacant land on the left side.


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Guest 30-May-2013 13:13
My Father moved to Florida in 1949. In about 1951-52 he moved into the Clover-Leaf trailer park a year or two before this photo was taken. That trailer-park would have been just off this picture to the bottom left on NW 2nd Avenue. It is now the site of the Miami office of the FBI. He remembers this interchange being built. Of particular interest is the memory he has of the undeveloped area in the middle left side of this photo. It is the area bordered by roads that make it appear to be shaped like the state of Nevada. You'll note that there is what appears to be an airstrip running northwest to southeast. He remember this being his playground as a child. Why? Because on both sides of this airstrip was a parked hundred's of disused surplus early war (WWII) aircraft. B-17 "Fain-tails", Brewster Buffalo's and Bermuda's. F4F Wildcats, Douglas Devastators and several other early war "surplus" aircraft. As they were all obsolete by then, people would come and scavenge parts, engines and such from them. Occasionally, someone would spend a few days and make one flyable scavenging from others and fly it out. He and his chums would spend hours pretending to be bombing "Kraut ball-Bering factories" and shooting down "Jap Zero's". Finally he said a scrap company came and chopped up and hauled of the rest. He also told me that the wooded area to the north (right) of Opa-Locka air-station in this photo, was an abandoned B-17 training base that still had all the buildings intact.