The Tropical sun
The Tropical Sun [LCCN: sn83025639], the self-declared "Official paper of Dade County", was the chief medium for Dade County, Florida, well before Miami (FL) was a twinkle in the land developers' eyes. First published in 1887, eight years before Miami was incorporated as a city, the Tropical Sun covered the events of Florida's Land Boom in the 1920s and its subsequent bust in preceding the Great Depression in south Florida. It also documents the growth of tourism, the presence of malaria in Florida prior to World War II, and other issues related to the struggles of the developers of south Florida's Atlantic coast. The only rival to the Tropical Sun was the Miami (FL) Metropolis [LCCN sn96027198] and its successor newspapers. The Tropical Sun was published as a weekly for most of its history but, also, as a semiweekly between 1903 and 1906. Miami and Dade County saw an increase in tourists after 1906 when Henry Flagler's railroad opened service to Key West. Before this date, tourist traffic to Key West would have involved travel by city. The location of the Tropical Sun's offices in Juno, Florida, "set back from the (railroad) track some thirty feet and from the wharf about fifty yards" is telling of both the newspaper's and south Florida's relationship with and their reliance on tourism. Between 1891 and 1895, the Tropical Sun was published in Juno, Florida. From 1895 to 1926, it was published in West Palm Beach, Florida. For a time beginning in 1914, the newspaper published both as a weekly under the Tropical Sun title and as a daily under the title, the Daily Tropical Sun. Both Juno and West Palm Beach are in current day (ca. 2007) Palm Beach County, Florida. But, both titles served the City of Miami and the whole of the then much larger Dade County during their years of publication. Palm Beach County was separated from Dade County in 1909.Cf, Andrews Meyers, Ruby. "Newspaper Pioneering on the Florida East Coast, 1891-1895". p.52. Online at Florida International University Digital Collections http://digitalcollections.fiu.edu/tequesta/files/1983/83_1_03.pdf.-- E. Kesse, University of Florida Digital Library Center
Newspaper, English, 1887
Guy I. Metcalf, Juno, Dade County, Fla, 1887