Even the federal government's General Services Administration couldn't spell Opa-locka properly and this was back when they employed competent people. The "l" after the hyphen is not capitalized because the name is a contraction of a lengthy Indian name.

I grew up in NW Hialeah in the late 50's and early 60's and the Navy property extended north of NW 119th Street (W and E 65th Street in Hialeah) from Red Road to the Seaboard Air Line railroad tracks at about NW 37th Avenue. Numerous men and boys from the north end of the county hunted quail on the government property which wasn't really fenced off and there were vehicle paths through portions that made the area secluded "lovers lanes."

I have often wondered how some of the parcels east of Red Road, and west of what is now Amelia Earhart Regional Park, ended up in the hands of private developers and now I know after finding this ad in The Miami News section that I saved due to a Beatles in Miami article. The area east of Red Road ended up with apartment houses, strip shopping centers, warehouse and small factories, gas stations, and the Lovell Brothers built a sizable townhouse development called "Palm Springs Villas" there where my first wife and I bought a two-story townhouse in 1974 just west of Amelia Earhart Regional Park property. We were assured that the park would be completed in several years but it took the county an additional 20 years to build the park. Fortunately we sold the property in 1981 before the entire development turned really ugly with a hodge-podge of paint colors and the almost total elimination of hundreds of beautiful mahogany trees by the newer residents of the development.

The parcels along LeJeune Road north of Gratigny Road turned into warehouses and large flea markets, surely not one of the county's more attractive areas.

It sure seems strange to me that all this land was either given away to the county for schools (Dade County Junior College - now Miami-Dade College) and a large regional park, or auctioned off in 1964 and yet the county built an airport in the Everglades on the Dade/Collier county line later that decade because they decided we needed a future replacement airport for Miami International. They could have turned the massive acreage south of Opa-locka Airport into a huge new international airport when combined with the tremendous acreage of Opa-locka Airport and the old Master's Field acreage. They had far more acreage than what existed at Miami International Airport at their disposal and yet they decided to build in the Everglades? Fortunately the feds decided that the Everglades could not sustain a major international airport and the airport was restricted to a training only facility known as Training and Transition Airport (TNT).

Another point to be considered is that if the federal government had not given some much land away to the county we wouldn't have had a Dade County Junior College (now Miami-Dade College North Campus) or the huge Amelia Earhart Regional Park today, because the county did not buy properties to land bank for the future. Thanks to the federal government we still have some considerable green space south of Opa-locka Airport and north of Hialeah.