MP/NOD Monthly Meeting – March 3

Date/Time
Date(s) - Sunday, March 3, 2019
2:00 pm - 3:30 pm

Location
Coral Gables Museum

Categories

• Monthly Meeting

The members of the Miami Pioneers and Natives of Dade historical society invite the public  — especially those with an interest in local history — to attend the monthly meeting on the first Sunday of the month at 2pm at the Coral Gables Museum, 285 Aragon Avenue in Coral Gables.

Karon Grunwell Buckley
The Florida Pioneer Museum

Our guest speaker for the March 3rd meeting at the museum is South Florida native Karon Grunwell Buckley on the subject of the Florida Pioneer Museum on Krome Avenue in Florida City.

Currently on display at the museum is a collection of fruit and vegetable carton labels from prominent shippers of yesteryear. From Florida City to Arch Creek in Dade County, packing houses were erected at the turn of the century along the Florida East Coast railroad tracks. By 1926, the Seaboard Airline Railway extended their mid-Florida route to Homestead, encouraging more packing houses to open.

Karon, and her father George Grunwell, are among the directors of the Florida Pioneer Museum, founded in association with Bob Jensen, dating back to 1962. The Florida East Coast Railway owned two bungalows which were the homes of the FEC section foreman and station agent. They were located on adjacent lots on the east side of South Flagler in Homestead just south of the Landmark Hotel. One of them, the station agent’s home, is the building the Museum is housed in now. The other one, the section foreman’s home, burned down.

Visitors to the Museum explore life as it was in South Florida in the early 1900s with rooms furnished as they would have been then with artifacts donated by local residents. Children find many items that they can touch and operate such as early telephones, cash registers and kitchen equipment. A tool room displays the agricultural implements and tools that early settlers used to plow their fields with mules. Exhibits also feature Henry Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway, schools, churches, archeology, Native Americans, and the tourism industry.

Each meeting features a presentation by a guest speaker, followed by social time and refreshments.

The public is invited. https://mpnod.org/