Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Historic Resorts & Mansions
Tampa Bay Hotel, Henry B Plant Museum, Tampa
Hotel Ponce de León, St Augustine
The Breakers, Palm Beach
Whitehall Mansion, Flagler Museum, Palm Beach
Biltmore Hotel, Coral Gables
Tin-Can Tourists, Retirees & a Big-Eared Mouse
For the record, tourism is Florida's number-one industry, and this doesn't count retirees -
the tourists who never leave.
Tourism didn't become a force in Florida until the 1890s, when Flagler built his coastal
railroad and his exclusive Miami Beach resorts. In the 1920s, middle-class 'tin-can tourists'
arrived via the new Dixie Hwy - driving Model Ts, sleeping in campers and cooking their
own food.
In the 1930s, to get those tourists spending, savvy promoters created the first 'theme
parks': Cypress Gardens and Silver Springs. But it wasn't until after WWII that Florida
tourism exploded. During the war, Miami was a major military training ground, and after-
ward many of those GIs returned with their families to enjoy Florida's sandy beaches at
leisure.
In addition, after the war social security kicked in and the nation's aging middle class
migrated south to enjoy their first taste of retirement. As old folks will, they came slowly
but steadily, at a rate of a thousand a week until they numbered in the hundreds of thou-
sands and then millions. Many came from the East Coast, and quite a few were Jewish: by
1960, Miami Beach was 80% Jewish, creating a famous ethnic enclave.
Then one day in 1963, so the story goes, Walt Disney flew over central Florida, spotted
the intersection of I-4 and the Florida Turnpike, and said, 'That's it.' In secret, he bought 43
sq miles of Orlando-area wetlands. Afterward, like an expert alligator wrestler, Disney
successfully negotiated with the state of Florida and was granted unprecedented and
unique municipal powers to build his tourist mecca.
Exempt from a host of state laws and building codes and largely self-governing, Disney
World opened in 1971. How big did it become? In 1950 Florida received 4.5 million tour-
