Miami, Florida

Miami's role in Gates' Everglades investigation is primarily contextual rather than archaeological. The city appears as a narrative anchor — a modern, recognizable entry point that Gates uses to situate viewers before heading into the wilder, less-familiar terrain of the Everglades and Florida's Treasure Coast. No on-camera experts were consulted specifically at the Miami location during the episode, though Gates' broader investigation eventually brought him to the Elliott Museum in Stuart, where he met CEO Rob Steele.

Historically, Miami's growth in the early 20th century was inseparable from the exploitation of South Florida's natural resources and its position as a transit point for goods — legal and otherwise. During Prohibition (1920–1933), the city's coastal geography made it particularly attractive to bootleggers who could move contraband through the maze of Everglades waterways with relative impunity. The Ashley gang was among the most notorious groups to take advantage of this environment, operating across the region over more than a decade.

Miami today is one of the most economically and culturally significant cities in the American Southeast, but traces of its rougher frontier past persist in the historical record and in local memory — exactly the kind of layered history that Gates' show tends to surface. The episode's brief stay in Miami underscores how quickly the region transformed: from a remote trading outpost frequented by outlaws like John Ashley, to a modern metropolis of nearly half a million people within just a few generations.

The episode does not make any specific archaeological or historical claims about Miami itself. Gates is candid that the city is a starting point rather than a destination, and the investigation's evidentiary weight rests on the sites further north along Florida's coast and into the Everglades interior.