Fiery Debate Over Miami Air Show in Everglades - Miami New Times
A wilderness photographer since 1972, the tall, sturdy 70-year-old has spent much of his life in the world-famous swamps of South Florida. With a long gray ponytail swaying across his back, he steps over the soft, algae-covered slough floor about 60 miles west of Miami, where Tamiami Trail curves northwest. It's humid at midday beneath a canopy of cypress and pond apple trees, and his dark-green shirt is soaked. It's a Bartram's rose gentian, a striking flower with thin, delicate petals, named for pioneering Florida naturalist William Bartram. "It's this subtle scene with greens and browns, and then all of a sudden you see a pop of color and it's a gorgeous flower," Hammer says. It's difficult to believe, but just a few hundred feet away, in Big Cypress National Preserve, sits a two-mile strip of concrete once planned to be the world's largest and most ambitious airport. In the late '60s, Dade County Mayor Chuck Hall proposed the 39-square-mile Everglades Jetport with six runways for "supersonic aircraft. Over the years, it's been used as a training facility for pilots, hosting a handful of takeoffs and landings each day. But if Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez has his way, the airstrip to nowhere may finally be put to use. Source: www.miaminewtimes.com
