Miami Circle site may soon open as park The Miami Circle, the 2,000-year-old Native American site that taxpayers shelled out $27 million to buy 10 years ago, may finally open to the public under a frugal state plan that would create a low-key park around the ancient landmark.
The Miami Circle, the 2,000-year-old remnant of the city's original inhabitants, has just been designated a National Historic Landmark, an honour that puts it on a select list of the country's most significant archaeological sites. Just don't bother strolling over to the Miami River for a look. A decade after taxpayers paid nearly $27 million to save the 2.2-acre bayfront site from development, there's little to see there other than a weedy plot of land and a circular depression where the main feature was buried in protective fill.
Nine years ago, an array of American Indians, environmentalists, preservationists, New Age spiritualists, diviners, even Cub Scouts rose up to save the Miami Circle, a 2,000-year-old artefact that many embraced as America's own Stonehenge. But today, the Circle -- a series of loaf-shaped holes chiselled into the limestone bedrock at the mouth of the Miami River -- is interred beneath bags of sand and gravel, laid over the formation in 2003 to protect it from the elements. And though taxpayers shelled out $27.6 million to purchase the 38-foot Circle and its surrounding two acres, visitors to the site's planned archaeological park likely will never see the actual work of some of Miami's earliest inhabitants.