The WPA Guide to Florida

The Sunshine State

Federal Writers' Project

• Publisher: Trinity University Press
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781595342089
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

During the 1930s in the United States, the Works Progress Administration developed the Federal Writers’ Project to support writers and artists while making a national effort to document the country’s shared history and culture. The American Guide series consists of individual guides to each of the states. Little-known authors—many of whom would later become celebrated literary figures—were commissioned to write these important books. John Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ralph Ellison are among the more than 6,000 writers, editors, historians, and researchers who documented this celebration of local histories. Photographs, drawings, driving tours, detailed descriptions of towns, and rich cultural details exhibit each state’s unique flavor.In the 21st Century, Florida is a major center for industry and tourism; however, published in 1939, the WPA Guide to Florida exhibits a rather rural and quiet state. This guide gives an interesting perspective on the Sunshine State before its explosive growth starting in the 1950s, focusing on the state’s Seminole roots and Spanish influence as well as its lush, diverse landscape.

PART I

Florida’s Background

Contemporary Scene

A CROSS the wide strip of its upper area, from the Atlantic to within a short distance of the Mississippi border, Florida is at once a continuation of the Deep South and the beginning of a new realm in which the system of two-party politics reasserts itself. Narrowing abruptly to a peninsula, it drops through five degrees of latitude and a constantly accentuated tropical setting, until the tip of its long Roman nose pokes very nearly into the confines and atmosphere of Latin America. Equatorial waters move up from the south along its coasts, to temper its climate and confuse its seasons; every winter a tidal wave of tourists moves down from the north, to affect its culture, its economy, its physical appearance. Throughout more than four centuries, from Ponce de Leon in his caravels to the latest Pennsylvanian in his Buick, Florida has been invaded by seekers of gold or of sunshine; yet it has retained an identity and a character distinctive to itself. The result of all this is a material and immaterial pattern of infinite variety, replete with contrasts, paradoxes, confusions, and inconsistencies.

Politically and socially, Florida has its own North and South, but its northern area is strictly southern and its southern area definitely northern. In summer the State is predominantly southern by birth and adoptions, and in winter it is northern by invasion. At all seasons it is divided into Old and New Florida, separated by the Suwannee River. The political thought that controls it originates in a united minority above the Suwannee and reaches down into the more populous peninsula to impose the diminishing theory that Florida should be preserved for Floridians rather than exploited for visitors.

Religious intolerance marked the conquest and early settlement of Florida, but the State has long since embraced practically all cults and religions, and licenses the occult and the supernatural. Yet its melting pot is a brew of conflicting ideas, which enables the native to dictate State policies and politics. And so the Florida Cracker runs the courthouse and assesses, collects, and spends the tax money.

The background traditions of Florida are of the Old South; and though the Republican Party regularly appears on the ballot, only once since Reconstruction days has the State switched from its Democratic allegiance. In 1928, when prohibition and religion confused the issues, the electorate supported Herbert Hoover.

To the visitor, Florida is at once a pageant of extravagance and a land of pastoral simplicity, a flood-lighted stage of frivolity and a behind-the-scenes struggle for existence. For the person with a house car it is a succession of trailer camps and a vagabond social life. For the Palm Beach patron it is a wintertime Newport made up of the same society, servants, and pastimes. For migratory agricultural labor it means several months of winter employment in the open under pleasant skies; and for the Negro turpentine worker, an unvarying job in the pine woods.

The derivation of the name Florida has not been overlooked in publicity literature, the rhetoric of which has lent itself to a major misconception. Nature, though lavish, has not been flamboyant enough to make the great variety of native flowers and plants notably obvious except to naturalists, scientists, and botanists. Spectacular settings have been devised by man, but since Florida remains primitive in many respects these splashes of color are comparatively isolated and, in some cases, hidden. Swamps and jungles have been enclosed and converted into Japanese, cypress, Oriental, and many other kinds of gardens, to which an admission fee is charged. Here have been assembled extensive collections of native and exotic plants.

On the other hand, florid rhetoric has not exaggerated the State’s much publicized scent—the perfume from a half-million-acre bouquet of citrus groves. A border region of localized smells, however, suggests that all is not fragrance in the land of flowers. From sponge and shrimp fleets, menhaden fertilizer factories, and the stacks of paper mills drift malodorous fumes that lade the sea breezes with unsung vapors. A neutralizing incense, the aromatic smoke from burning pine woods, has steadily lessened with the expansion of forest-fire control, but occasionally there is a pall as well as a moon over Miami from Everglades muck fires.

Attempts to romanticize Florida’s playground features have resulted in an elaborate painting of the lily. Coast resorts have been strung into a be-jeweled necklace that sparkles on the bosom of a voluptuous sea; all is glamour and superficiality. This superimposed glitter diverts attention from Florida’s more characteristic native life.

The pioneer settler came from the same stock as the Appalachian mountain dweller, and long existence in the flat pine woods tended to perpetuate his original pattern of thought. He knew little of life beyond his own small clearing and saw only a few infrequent visitors, until a network of highways left him exposed to many persons in motorcars. This traffic affected his economy and aroused his instinct to profit. He set up a roadside vegetable display, then installed gasoline pumps and a barbecue stand, and finally with the addition of overnight cabins he was in the tourist business.

The highways even mechanized his mountain music. To attract patronage, he installed a ‘jook organ’ that would dispense Bronx-composed records of hillbilly laments at the drop of a nickel. Real hillbilly bands, that regularly come to Florida, scorn the rural areas and become street minstrels in the larger towns or play in bars and night clubs for collections. To their music is added a sidewalk overtone from guitars, zithers, accordions, and harmonicas played by mendicants who follow the tourist crowds.

Ten thousand miles of roads that crisscross the State have streaked it with what might be described as roadside culture and commerce, with each section revealing a characteristic quality. In the staid plantation territory of northern Florida, placards on gate posts chastely admit, ‘Guests Accepted,’ and tourist camps offer ‘Cabins for Travelers Only.’ Everywhere are ‘dine and dance’ places, which, as the highways extend southward into the established tourist belt, more and more resemble midways. Vegetable stands add citrus fruit, and then about everything likely to catch the motorist’s eye: carved coconuts, polished conch shells, marine birds made of wood or plaster, cypress ‘knees,’ pottery, bouquets made from tinted seashells or dyed sea oats, and an endless assortment of other native and imported handicraft. Agrarian preoccupations turn from corn, cotton, and tobacco to alligator and lion farms, reptile ranches, botanical gardens, and Indian villages. Here and there are the ‘pitches’ of palm readers and astrologers; but, to maintain the contrast, long stretches of uninhabited pine woods intervene with warning signs, ‘Open Range—Beware of Cows and Hogs.’

In one notable instance, where the United States Army and a hundred years of persuasion failed, a highway has succeeded. The Seminole Indians surrendered to the Tamiami Trail. From the Everglades the remnants of this race emerged, soon after the trail was built, to set up their palm-thatched villages along the road and to hoist tribal flags as a lure to passing motorists. Like their white brethren, they sell articles of handicraft and for a nominal fee will pose for photographs.

This concentration of the Seminole, however, by no means represents the extent of their influence. Seminole names are more numerous and widespread in Florida than are the living members of the race. Such names were even more plentiful before the railroads interceded in behalf of train callers—as one example among many, the ‘jawbreaker’ Ichepuckesassa was changed to Plant City. The Indians themselves have made the most of one profitable name. Since they discovered that the story of Osceola is popular among tourists, that fiery war chief has acquired many descendants, and most of the present-day Osceolas display their names along the Tamiami Trail.

Although signboards ruin many beautiful stretches of country, they are, in fact, a significant part of the Florida scene. In rural upper Florida one sees crude notices of patent medicines or of ‘Mules for Sale.’ In the vicinity of St. Augustine a great deal of early history is presented on roadside signs, and farther south the flora and fauna are similarly publicized for commercial purposes. Nearly everywhere gastronomy and distance are combined in directional markers that announce ‘11 miles to Guava Paste’ or ‘13 miles to Tupelo Honey.’ The name of a popular brand of malaria medicine appears on tin signs attached to thousands of trees, but the manufacturer complains that business has been ‘terrible’ since mosquito control became effective.

The signboard plays an important role in that it introduces the Yankee to the Cracker and quickly establishes the fact that the two have much in common although their customs differ. The native Floridian may offer specious replies to what he considers oversimple questions, but he is likely to be puzzled at the abysmal ignorance that causes the Yankee to refer to orange groves as ‘orchards,’ sandspurs as ‘sandburs,’ and sandflies as ‘sandfleas.’ Neither does he see any reason to exclaim over a bullfrog chorus in February or the call of the whippoorwill at twilight in early March. In his own behalf he is fluently persuasive on the virtues of his particular locality; but the Yankee in Florida has become a roving visitor determined to see the entire State regardless of regional blandishments.

The first-time visitor is primarily a sightseer. He is the principal customer for the admission places along the road. He learns very soon how far Florida is supposed to project from the Old South by the discovery that a turpentine still with its Negro quarters has been turned into a tourist attraction and advertised as a survival of bygone plantation days.

Clockwise and counterclockwise the sightseeing newcomer makes the circuit of the State, filling the highways with a stream of two-way traffic. If traveling southward by the Gulf coast route, he stops to partake of a Spanish dinner in the Latin quarter of Tampa, to sit on the green benches of St. Petersburg, to view the Ringling Circus animals and art museum at Sarasota, to admire the royal palms at Fort Myers. Thence he follows the Tamiami Trail through the ghostly scrub cypress and primitive silence of the Everglades, to encounter at last the theatrical sophistication of Miami. As a side trip from the latter city, he may proceed down the long overseas highway to Key West, once the State’s most populous city and an important defense base, but since its recent rehabilitation by the Federal Government something of a public curiosity, a place favored by artists and writers, and noted for its green-turtle steaks.

On his return up the Atlantic coast, the traveler may concede that publicity word-pictures of the resorts from Miami Beach northward have not been greatly exaggerated, but he is impressed by the long intervening stretches of woodland, suggesting that Florida is still very largely an empty State. From Palm Beach, which has long been the earthly Valhalla of financial achievement, he may detour inland to discover the hidden winter-vegetable kingdom on the muck lands along the southern shore of Lake Okeechobee, where Negro workers harvest thousands of carloads of beans and other fresh food supplies; or farther north he may swing inland by way of Orlando, through the great citrus groves of the hilly lake region and the thriving strawberry country around Plant City; then up to Ocala, where he can look through the glass bottoms of boats at water life in the depths of crystal-clear springs. Returning to the east coast, he inspects the far-famed natural speedway at Daytona Beach and the old Spanish fort at St. Augustine before he reaches the northern terminal city of Jacksonville. Frequently at the end of the tour, the visitor announces that he is never coming back.

His second excursion into Florida is somewhat different. On his first trip, unconsciously or deliberately, he had selected a spot where he thought later on he might want to live and play, and when he comes again he usually returns to that chosen place for a season. Ultimately, in many cases, he buys or builds a home there and becomes by slow degrees a citizen and a critic.

The evolution of a tourist into a permanent resident consists of a struggle to harmonize misconceptions and preconceptions of Florida with reality. An initial diversion is to mail northward snapshots of himself reclining under a coconut palm or a beach umbrella, with the hope that they will be delivered in the midst of a blizzard. At the same time, the tourist checks weather reports from the North, and if hi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Foreword
• Preface
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Maps
• General Information
• Calendar of Annual Events
• Part I. Florida’s Background
• Part II. Principal Cities
• Part III. The Florida Loop
• Part IV. Appendices