UWF Florida History EXAM 3 STUDY GUIDE: WHAT?

September 1926; first major hurricane to hit southeast Florida in 16 years; slams directly into Miami Beach; 400 killed, 63,000 injured, 50,000 people left homeless; goes around the peninsula to regain strength in the Gulf of Mexico and slams directly into Pensacola; downtown area devastated; last nail in the coffin for the Florida Land Boom (DON'T INVEST IN FLORIDA REAL ESTATE ); begins Great Depression in Florida

1926 Hurricane

purchased by Dick and Julie Pope; built walkways, bridges over the creek, and cleared brush; officially opened in 1936 => very profitable during the Great Depression; featured "authentic southern belles" in the gardens to cash in on Gone With the Wind craze; maintained by Julie and the kids while Dick was reporting in World War II => began offering waterski shows; hosted many popular events and celebrities (Miss Universe pageant, Esther Williams)

Cypress Gardens

replaces the Grange Movement of the 1870's'; originated in Texas and spread nationwide; first Florida Alliance est. 1887; "UNION FOR FLORIDA FARMERS", particularly in north Florida; dealt with many of the economic issues facing farmers at the turn of the century (poverty, overdependence on cotton, beef with the railroad monopolies, etc.)

Farmer's Alliance

Drew Field Airport (Tampa) quadrupled in size; 120,000 combat air service people went through drew field between 1941 and 1945 Eglin Air Force Base (Fort Walton); originally Chocktawhatchee National Forest; taken over by the Army Air Corps; air fields used to secretly train B-25 bombers in Doolittle's Raid. NAS Pensacola quadrupled in size; trained thousands naval aviators; "mother-in-law of the U.S. Navy" => birthplace of many Navy wives; Whiting Field est. in WWII years Camp Blanding (Jacksonville); 73,000 acre Army base; Camp Gordon Johnston (Caribel/Big Bend/south of Tallahassee); amphibious training base for Pacific campaigns (Normandy, Okinowa, Iwo Jima); shut down after the war. long, extensive coast made it the battleground of the U-boat war

Florida During World War II

made Florida accessible to not just wealthy along with Henry Ford's Model T; provided the need for better roads; began to wane around 1925 due to deception and dangerous business practices unscrupulous real estate developers who would advertise Florida property to freezing snowbirds up North that turned out to be pieces of flooded swampland (NOTHING HAS CHANGED); set up banks to store depositors money and buy more real estate => 1/3 of all Florida banks went under around 1925 once public skepticism sent prices plummeting; exacerbated by railroad strike in Miami Beach => sinking of Prince Valdamar block shipping lanes.

Florida Land Boom

struck a deal with the governor to get land 25 cents to turn swampland into cultivated land; acquired over 1,600,000 of "worthless" Florida real estate between Kissimmee; drained parts of the Everglades and dredged river curvatures into canals => CREATED ECOLOGICAL NIGHTMARE despite Big Sugar boom; destroyed central/south Florida Everglades and led to increased erosion in the channelized ditches left in the river flattening

Hamilton Disston

became multimillionaire by investing in Standard Oil Company with John D. Rockefeller; went to St. Augustine for his wife's health (died); remarried his wife's nurse and spent their honeymoon in St. Augustine; built Hotel Ponce de Leon (downtown; present-day Flagler College), Alcazar, and Casa Monica; 1894; bought dilapidated railroad from Jacksonville to St. Augustine to serve as home base for his supply shipments (Florida East Coast Railroad); kept extending it down to West Palm Beach, Daytona, etc. and built hotels at each railroad top to attract wealthy northern tourists until the citrus freeze of 1894-95 compelled him to extend to Fort Dallas (Miami); proved naysayers wrong with a railroad from Miami to Key West 1904-1912; EXPENSIVE ($20 million), DANGEROUS, DEADLY => 3 hurricanes killed 700 of 4,000 workers eventually destroyed in the 1935 Labor Day hurricane. developed EAST coast of Florida with railroads

Henry Flagler

built a series of railroads cutting across the Florida peninsula that connected the Atlantic coast to the Gulf Coast by going through rich agricultural lands that would take his products to Jacksonville, Tampa Bay, Kissimmee, etc.; namesake Line and city in South Florida; 1890's: branched out into building luxury hotel (Tampa Bay Hotel, present site of University of Tampa) => only available for the wealthy; engaged in friendly rivalry with Henry Flagler; developed Florida PENINSULA with railroads.

Henry Plant

Jacksonville, FL; major hub of the early movie industry before Hollywood became the center of the cinema universe that we know of today; over 30 film companies making short silent B&W films with Oliver Hardy (Laurel and Hardy], Rudolph Valentino, Keystone Kops, etc.; eventually caused controversy with the locals => relocated to California for better weather and increased creativity/flexibility; base of Norman Studio adventure films (all-black cast); site of many popular movies during World War II such as The Yearling (Ocala), 30 Seconds Over Tokyo, and 12'O Clock High

Hollywood East

started out as a Banana River Naval Air Station => Patrick Air Force Base, Cape Canaveral; located where Florida juts out into the Atlantic Ocean; ideal location for NASA moon mission rocket launching site to beat Soviets in the Space Race; renamed after President John F. Kennedy following his assassination on November 22, 1963 and famous speech promising to put Americans on the moon by the end of the decade => succeeded on July 20 1969 with the success of the Apollo 11 lunar landing (Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin, and Neil Armstrong); heart of Florida's "Space Coast" (Melbourne, Brevard County, Titusville, Cocoa Beach

Kennedy Space Center

10,000 Cubans storm the Peruvian embassy in Havana seeking political asylum; Castro uncharacterizable gives them a few months to use the small port city of Mariel and leave; 125,000 attempt to flee using every floatation device they can find; inundate the beaches of south Florida (Miami, Key West, etc.); only 2% of evacuees were prisoners.

Mariel boatlift

Northern author who moved to Florida in the 1930s and purchased an orange grove plot in Cross Creek near Micanopy (basically the boonies); husband ran a hotel in St. Augustine (present-day Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not Musuem) fascinated by local blacks and cracker culture => published The Yearling (1938) about a young boy who finds a faun and tries to keep it =>runaway bestseller => won a Pultizer Prize => turned into a Hollywood movie; died in the 1950s

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

author who became infatuated with the everglades in the 1920s published Everglades: River of Grass (1947) => definitive book on the convinced people that the Everglades was a unique ecological biosphere (not just a swamp)) => became leading advocate for the preservation of the Everglades => SUCCESSFUL => Everglades National Park became the first national park in the state of Florida thanks to her efforts that very same year.

Marjorie Stoneman Douglas

connected from Pensacola to Tallahassee and the rest of Florida along the route of present-day I-10; spearheaded by Col. William D. Chipley ("Mr. Railroad"); active in Pensacola politics in the late 1800's; state Senator and aspiring U.S. Senator; namesake town in Washington County; eventually bought out by Louisville and Nashville Railroad (L&N) and CSX in the 20th century.

Pensacola-Atlantic Railroad

1880's - early 1900's; fossilized animal bones in the soil; huge industry in Florida (Polk County); used for fertilizer => shipped off to Jacksonville, Tampa, Fort Myers, etc. to be sold overseas usually Europe and South America; $2 billion a year by 1900; gave rise to the mining towns in the Peace River Valley (Fort Meade Fighting Miners); UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES => phosphate contains scant amounts of uranium (radioactive) => massive pits of exposed phosphates in the soil over time is the reason why Polk County, FL has one of the highest rates of cancer in the country.

Phosphate Industry in Florida

became a popular tourist attraction and steamboat excursion destination in the late 1800s; eventually offered boat tours with glass bottoms to view underwater (first devised in the 1870s by a gentleman who was looking for submerged cypress logs; continued popularity in the 20th century with the rise of auto-tourism; Jim Crow laws prohibited blacks from going to Silver Springs, but owners set up an adjacent attraction 100 yards upstream called Paradise Springs with the same glass bottom boats from Silver Springs; discontinued in the 1964 with the success of the Civil Rights movement

Silver Springs

sought to connect Tampa and across the south Florida Everglades to Miami; 1923; led motorcade between Fort Myers to Miami clearing old Army and Seminole trails (took 3 weeks); proved to FL Road Department and the public that it could be done; ditches on both sides became roadbed and later built overpasses to allow Everglades flow to channel out the north and south sides of the trial unobstructed; ran into trouble with the Seminoles when the trail began to run into one of their traditional canoe paths; built special bridge to allow them to go from one side of the trail to another.

Tamiami Trial

brainchild of Walt Disney; sought to build upon the success of Disneyland (Irvine, California) in Florida; formed secret companies to buy out the property surrounding Disney World from the locals; opened to the public in 1971; contained 4 major theme parks (Magic Kingdom, EPCOT [1982], Hollywood Studios [1989], and Animal Kingdom [1998]), numerous luxury resorts inside the park, and miles of underground tunnels (First Floor "Utilidor") underneath Main Street USA linking the various sites of the Magic Kingdom.

Walt Disney World

purchased by ex-Navy frogman Newton Perry in 1947 to create underwater theater area (mermaid acrobatic shows); recruited local girls to become mermaids => wildly popular => bought out by state park system and even holds mermaid reunions (class of 'x)

Weeki-Wachee Springs