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The Hidden History of Resort Elephants at Miami Beach

Two elephants living at a Miami Beach resort blurred the boundaries between work and leisure in 1920s Florida.

During the Florida Land Boom of the 1920s, entrepreneurs and real estate developers deployed creative tactics to woo potential clients to the Sunshine State to invest in Florida land. All-expense paid trips to Miami Beach, Coral Gables, and other South Florida developments drew potential investors from points northward, enticing them with exotic architecture, imported tropical foliage, and an array of leisure amenities.

At Miami Beach, where Indianapolis-based entrepreneur Carl Fisher invested millions in resort development during the 1920s, tourists encountered a surprising attraction: elephants. Two elephants were brought to Miami Beach. They were named Carl II (named after Fisher himself) and Rosie (who arrived later as a companion for Carl II). 

These elephants were not part of a zoo, but they were integral to the leisure landscape. The pachyderms delighted visitors by caddying on the golf course and frolicking in the waves. In one photograph, an elephant pulls a cart of tourists while carrying young children on its back; other youngsters eagerly await their turn.

Nestled within a palm-studded landscape with one of Fisher’s swank hotels rising in the background, the elephant stands within Miami Beach’s carefully curated landscape of leisure. Yet the elephants were more than props; they also hauled building materials and cleared land for development. Seeing the elephants’ work at Miami Beach positions these more-than-human actors in the histories of leisure in South Florida, as they signal the uncomfortable degree to which work and leisure were deeply entangled in this place.  

The elephants resisted pigeonholing. At one level, Carl II and Rosie were anthropomorphized, but at another, they were cordoned off—physically and socially—from the tourists they entertained. Because the elephants were (partly) laborers, they were often described as akin to Black workers. And yet, when they entertained white, leisure-class tourists, they occupied spaces that African Americans could not. By keeping elephants at all, Fisher hoped to put them to work creating a resort for humans, which would outlast their time on the island.  

Thinking with animals, as Gregg Mitman and Lorraine Daston have encouraged, can transform our notions about differences and boundaries. This includes boundaries between work and play, between nature and culture, between the human and non-human, and between different social and racial categories. To think with the Miami Beach elephants suggests ways in which these animals disrupted categories that separated nature from culture, animals from people, white from Black, and work from leisure.