What was New Year’s Eve like in Miami before Pitbull? These old photos show you
Concerts and fireworks along the bayfront, with Putbull taking center stage. That’s how the 305 has greeted the New Year in recent years.
But there was a time when music at the park was a second act to the main act: the Orange Bowl Parade rolling up and down Biscayne Boulevard in downtown Miami.
Thousands lined the streets and millions more watched on local and network TV as bands, twinkling floats, even a celebrity or two marched and waved their way along the street, bathed in light for the cameras, palm trees swaying for those envious people from up North.
Major South Florida companies — Flagler Federal, Jordan Marsh, the Miami Herald — sponsored the elaborate floats. The parade got started each year with the All-County Marching Band, a collection of the best high school musicians in Miami-Dade County.
By 2002, the Orange Bowl Parade was gone, done in by climbing finances and decreasing interest. A smaller version of the parade geared more for kids, the Junior Orange Bowl Parade, continues to march in Coral Gables during the holiday stretch.
But the King Orange Jamboree is no more. Except in our memories.
Let’s take a look back at the big parade that once ruled downtown Miami on New Year’s Eve:
OLD PHOTOS: See old photos of the parade, mostly from the 1960s.
This story was originally published December 27, 2021 at 8:28 AM.
