About SOBE Miami Golf Cart Tours
SOBE Miami Golf Cart Tours is a locally-owned tour company. Our golf cart tours are family-friendly and perfect for getting familiar with South Beach. We offer group and private tours which cover history, art influences, and fun facts about the resort city.
South Beach is known for its sunny beaches but our guests learn a lot more; we showcase elegant Art Deco architecture, boutiques, local eateries, galleries, museums, and stores. We seek to support local businesses of South Beach on our social media channels; if interested, we recommend favorite local spots to our guests.
General Area
South Beach, also nicknamed SoBe, is a neighborhood in the city of Miami Beach, Florida, United States, located due east of Miami city proper between Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. The area encompasses all of the barrier islands of Miami Beach south of Indian Creek.
This area was the first section of Miami Beach to be developed, starting in the 1910s, due to the development efforts of Carl G. Fisher, the Lummus Brothers, and John S. Collins, the latter of whose construction of the Collins Bridge provided the first vital land link between mainland Miami and the beaches.
The history
South Beach started as farmland. In 1870, Henry and Charles Lum purchased 165 acres (67 ha) for coconut farming. Charles Lum built the first house on the beach in 1886. In 1894, the Lum brothers left the island, leaving control of the plantation to John Collins, who came to South Beach two years later to survey the land. He used the land for farming purposes, discovering fresh water and extending his parcel from 14th Street to 67th in 1907.
In 1912, Miami businessmen the Lummus Brothers acquired 400 acres (160 ha) of Collins’ land in an effort to build an oceanfront city of modest single family residences. In 1913 Collins started construction of a bridge from Miami to Miami Beach. Although some local residents invested in the bridge, Collins ran short of money before he could complete it.