On November 13, 1955, a segregated beach called Homestead Bayfront North opened at this site after many wade-ins, public protests seeking waterfront access for Black Americans. Its creation gave people with African heritage some access to Biscayne Bay, but separately from white visitors at Homestead Bayfront Park. Even amid the ordinary sights and sounds of a beach day, tension remained, as a miles-long canal patrolled by police formed a physical barrier between two roads, two parks, and two groups of Americans. After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended legal segregation and the Jim Crow era, Homestead Bayfront North closed, and visitors and some employees moved to the newly integrated Homestead Bayfront Park, which remains a county park. The site then lay unused for years until Biscayne National Monument was created in 1968, and since then people from across the United States and around the world have visited and recreated here as equals.