Virginia Key is an barrier island in Miami, Florida. It is located in Biscayne Bay south of Brickell and north of Key Biscayne and is accessible from the mainland via the Rickenbacker Causeway. The island is mainly occupied by the Virginia Key Beach Park, Miami Seaquarium, Miami-Dade's Central District Wastewater Treatment Plant, and the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. Other facilities include the former Miami Marine Stadium, the National Marine Fisheries Service Southeast Fisheries Science Center, and an office of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. History What is now Virginia Key was the southern end of a barrier island that extended from the New River inlet in Fort Lauderdale to just north of Key Biscayne. Early accounts by Spanish explorers indicated the existence of one or more inlets somewhere on the long spit of land enclosing the northern end of Biscayne Bay, but such inlets open and close over time. At the beginning of the 19th century, there was no inlet through the barrier island between the New River Inlet and Bear Cut, at the northern end of Key Biscayne. Hurricanes in 1835 and 1838 opened a new inlet, Narrows Cut (now known as Norris Cut), separating Virginia Key from what is now Fisher Island at the south end of Miami Beach. The island was named by Frederick H. Gerdes of the United States Coast Survey in 1849. He noted that the island north of Key Biscayne had no name, and had not existed as an island until 'Narrows Cut' had broken through "ten or twelve" years before (i.e., the hurricane of 1835 or 1838). He described Virginia Key as three miles (5 km) long and one mile (1.6 km) wide (later, as five miles (8 km) long and one-and-a-half miles wide), with a fine Atlantic beach, but mostly covered with mangroves. Virginia Key Beach Park In May 1945, seven civil rights activists supported by the local NAACP chapter staged a "wade-in" at the whites’ only Baker's Haulover Beach in Dade County Florida. Five men and two women protested Jim Crow era laws that denied access to recreation based on race. In a Miami emerging from World War II this meant "colored" people could not share with whites the legendary beaches along and in the waters of Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. The struggle for a "colored-only" beach in Miami signified the