Saving Cities Built on the Sea

Long before Hollywood dreamed up Waterworld, Laura Roberts grew up in it. Her family owned a stilt house in Miami's Biscayne Bay--one of seven that still remain in "Stiltsville," an eccentric collection of homes standing like flamingoes in the shoals seven miles off the coast. In Al Capone's day, the community doubled as an aquatic red-light district. Bygone booze-and-broads joints like Pierre's Bikini Club are etched in Miami's nefarious past. But today Laura, 35, and her husband Jeff, 36, use her family's stilt house as a weekend retreat, an octopus' garden where their children can angle for bonefish from the balcony...