Built in 1963, the Miami Marine Stadium took advantage of a beautiful view of downtown Miami and a passing speedboat trend, but now the world's first boat racing stadium is now an abandoned maze of vandalized cement.
When the Miami Marine Stadium opened it seemed like a great fit for the seaside city that already had a strong relationship with boats and water sports. Despite the death of one of the speedboat racers on opening day of the park, surely a bad omen, the stadium thrived for decades as the world's first and only stadium custom built to view motor boat races. The venue also hosted concerts, boxing events, and anything else that would pack the over-6,000 wooden seats beneath the broad cement shade. Unfortunately the stadium was declared unsafe in 1992 and the site was simply left to rot.
Of course the open air seating was nearly impossible to seal off to trespassers and the empty halls and cement walls quickly became completely covered in thick layers of graffiti. The wooden seats were marked up, destroyed, or simply ravaged by the elements and now the venue looks closer to a post-apocalyptic wasteland than a boat racing center for family fun.
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