History
The Seminole interpretation of its name, "High Prairie", evokes a picture of the grassy plains used by the native Indians coming from the everglades to dock their canoes and display their wares for the newcomers of Miami. This "high prairie" caught the eye of pioneer aviator Glenn Curtiss and Missouri cattleman James H. Bright who saw great potential in 1921.
In the early "Roaring '20s", Hialeah produced significant entertainment contributions. Sporting included the Spanish sport of jai-alai and greyhound racing, and media included silent movies like D.W. Griffith’s The White Rose which was made at the Miami Movie Studios located in Hialeah. However, the 1926 Miami Hurricane brought many of these things to an end.
In the years since its incorporation in 1925, many historical events and people have been associated with Hialeah. The opening of the Hialeah Park Race Track in 1925 (which was nicknamed the "Grand Dame") as a horse track received more coverage in the Miami media than any other sporting event in the history of Miami up to that time and since then there have been countless horse racing histories played out at the world famous 220-acre (0.89 km2) park. It was considered one of the most grand of thoroughbred horse racing parks with its majestic Mediterranean style architecture and was considered the Jewel of Hialeah at the time.
The Park’s grandeur has attracted millions, included among them are names known around the world such as the Kennedy family, Harry Truman, General Omar Bradley, Winston Churchill, and J.P. Morgan. The Hialeah Park Race Track also holds the dual distinction of being an Audubon Bird Sanctuary due to its famous pink flamingos and being listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The famous aviatrix Amelia Earhart in 1937 said her final good-byes to the continental U.S. from Hialeah as she left on her ill-fated flight around the world in 1937.
While Hialeah was once envisioned as a playground for the elite, Cuban exiles, fleeing Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution as well as World War II Veterans and city planners transformed the city into a working-class community. Hialeah historian Patricia Fernandez-Kelly explained "It became an affordable Eden." She further describes the city as "...a place where different groups have left their imprint while trying to create a sample of what life should be like." Several waves of Cuban exiles, starting after The Cuban Revolution in 1959 and continuing through to the Freedom Flights from 1965–1973, the Mariel Boatlift in 1980, and the Balseros or boat people of the late 1990s, created what at least one expert has considered the most economically successful immigrant enclave in U.S. history as Hialeah is the only American industrial city that continues to grow.
From a population of 1,500 in 1925, Hialeah has grown at a rate faster than most of the ten largest cities in the State of Florida since the 1960s and holds the rank of Florida’s fifth-largest city, with more than 224,000 residents. The city is also one of the largest employers in Dade County. Predominantly Hispanic, Hialeah residents are characterized as having assimilated their cultural heritage and traditions into a hard-working and diverse community proud of its ethnicity and family oriented neighborhoods.
In January 2009 Forbes Magazine listed Hialeah as one of most boring cities in the United States citing the city's large population and anonymity in the national media.
Read more about this topic: Hialeah, Florida
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“Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
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“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)