The History of Florida (110 page)

is whether it [Florida] will grow up.”18

The question, “Wil Florida ever grow up?” has been asked before. In

1943, the Miami writer and critic Philip Wylie challenged and pleaded with

Floridians to change habits in a front-page
Miami
Herald
article. “At the

end of the war, there will be two courses open to us,” contended Wylie. “We

can seize the gigantic opportunities at hand and develop this unique region

into a new heart of the new world—or we can go on being a tropical Coney

Island.” In words all too familiar to Floridians in 1886, 1926, or 2012, Wy-

lie desperately wished for something better than a “tropical Coney Island.”

He complained, half optimistical y, half pessimistical y: “We haven’t asked

people to live here. We’ve asked them to visit.” But in words resonant today,

he reminded readers, “The original buildup of south Florida as a land of Oz

col apsed with the boom.”19

Today, Florida stands at a crossroads with new and profound challenges.

Will we grow up? Can Florida become a model showing the nation how to

proof

manage growth, restore ecosystems, preserve water, and balance genera-

tions of diverse residents into a common cause? Will the challenge of global

warming simply overwhelm a state with over a thousand miles of coastline

or serve as a ral ying cry? The state legislature seems determined to do ev-

erything possible to jump-start the growth machine by abolishing impact

fees, cutting taxes, and eliminating laws that protect wetlands. Can Florida

possibly maintain the pell-mell growth that added 16 million residents be-

tween 1945 and 2005? Wil baby boomers rescue Florida by choosing to

retire in Florida, or wil they prefer new destinations with less sunshine

but more amenities? Will age-restricted communities such as the Vil ages

and Sun City Center be as al uring to boomers as it was to their parents?

The 2010 census indicated that growth had drastical y declined in the newly

built, far-flung boomburbs. Floridians were returning to cities. What is the

tipping point when future tourists and residents simply reject Florida be-

cause its roads are too congested, its lakes and rivers too pol uted, and its

infrastructure simply inadequate?

To rephrase the question: What wil , what should, the next Florida dream

be? The Florida dream will reinvent itself—it always has—but in what form?

Born in the peaceful but anxious days after World War II, a new Florida

526 · Raymond A. Mohl and Gary R. Mormino

dream emerged. Americans flocked by the millions to Florida, driven by the

lure of easy living, low taxes, cheap housing, and better Februarys. Like Cal-

ifornia, its dream-state twin, Florida offered Americans eternal sunshine,

saltwater breezes, but most importantly, the promise of a better life. For

senior citizens—as well as Ponzi schemers—Florida was a place of second

chances, a place where new designs of living unfolded for retirees. The Flor-

ida dream worked so well that aside from some mild hiccups, the economy

and population added hundreds and sometimes thousands of newcomers

daily, each of whom needed housing, sod, plumbers, and other necessities.

Florida today, like the rest of the United States, struggles with doubt and

uncertainty. Global warming poses an ominous cloud over the state’s future.

Several major trends, each carrying the weight of history, have converged.

The big changes that we have outlined—demographic revolution, techno-

logical innovation, shifting economic patterns, troubled race relations, and

waves of new immigration—have brought us to our contemporary condi-

tion. And those same forces of change will still be at work shaping the Flor-

ida of tomorrow.

Notes

1. James Stirling,
Letters from the Slave States
(London: J. W. Parker, 1857), 227.

proof

2. Frank F. Rogers, “The State of Florida and Its Highways,”
Florida Highways
6 (May

1929):5.

3. Nevin O. Winter,
Florida: The Land of Enchantment
(Boston: Page, 1918), 369.

4. “Florida Highways,”
Florida Highways
7 (March 1930):34.

5. Raymond Arsenault, “The End of the Long Hot Summer: The Air Conditioner and

Southern Culture,”
Journal of Southern History
50 (November 1984):597–628.

6. Mark Sullivan,
Our Times
, 6 vols. (New York: Scribner’s, 1926–35), 6:647.

7. June Cleo and Hank Mesouf,
Florida: Pol uted Paradise
(Philadelphia: Chilton, 1964),

2. 8. A. Lowel Hunt,
Florida Today: New Land of Opportunity
(New York: Scribner’s,

1950), 2.

9. Joe Alex Morris, “The Truth about the Florida Race Troubles,”
Saturday Evening

Post
, 21 June 1952, 24–25, 50, 55–58; William S. Fairfield, “Florida: Dynamite Law Replaces

Lynch Law,”
Reporter,
5 August 1952, 31–34; “Bigotry and Bombs in Florida,”
Southern

Patriot
10 (January 1952):1, 4; Nathan Perlmutter, “Bombing in Miami: Anti-Semitism and

the Segregationists,”
Commentary
25 (June 1958): 498–503.

10. Frank Soler, “Thoughts from a Wounded Heart,”
Miami Mensual
5 (August 1985):11.

11. Alejandro Portes and Alex Stepick,
City on the Edge: The Transformation of Miami

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).

12.
Miami Herald
, 3 April 2005.

Boom, Bust, and Uncertainty: A Social History of Modern Florida · 527

13. Brian Duffy, “Florida, Paradise Lost,”
U.S. News and World Report
,
11 October 1993,

40–53.

14. Mike Vogel, “Good Migrations,”
Florida Trend
48 (April 2006):26–31.

15. “Stake in the Weeds,”
Los Angeles Times
, 27 July 1926.

16. George Packer, “The Ponzi State: Florida’s Financial Disaster,”
New Yorker
, 9 Febru-

ary 2009, 81.

17. Michael Grunwald, “Is Florida the Sunset State?”
Time
, 10 July 2008; Packer, “The

Ponzi State,” 80–93; Damien Cave, “Florida, Despair and Foreclosure,”
New York Times
, 8

February 2009; “Is Florida Over?,”
Wall Street Journal
, 29 September 2007.

18. Grunwald, “Is Florida the Sunset State?”

19. Philip Wylie, “True Greatness,”
Miami Herald
, 2 December 1943.

Bibliography

Since the publication of the original essay in 1996, modern Florida has become a cottage

industry for writers and historians. Some of the best new books include:

Braden, Susan R.
The
Architecture
of
Leisure:
The
Florida
Resort
Hotels
of
Henry
Flagler
and
Henry
Plant
. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002.

Colburn, David, and Lance DeHaven-Smith.
Florida
Megatrends:
Critical
Issues
in
Florida.

Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002.

Davis, Jack E., and Raymond Arsenault.
Paradise
Lost?
The
Environmental
History
of
Florida
. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005.

Derr, Mark.
Some
Kind
of
Paradise:
A
Chronicle
of
Man
and
the
Land
. Gainesville: Univer-proof

sity Press of Florida, 1998.

Desrosiers-Lauzon, Godefroy.
Florida’s
Snowbirds:
Spectacle,
Mobility,
and
Community
since
1945.
Montreal: McGill Queens University Press, 2011.

Dunn, Marvin.
Black
Miami
in
the
Twentieth
Century.
Gainesvil e: University Press of Florida, 1997.

Foglesong, Richard E.
Married
to
the
Mouse:
Walt
Disney
and
Orlando
. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

Garcia, Maria Cristina.
Havana
USA:
Cuban
Exiles
and
Cuban
Americans
in
South
Florida
.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

Green, Ben.
Before
His
Time:
The
Untold
Story
of
Harry
T.
Moore.
New York: Free Press, 1999.

Grunwald, Michael.
The
Swamp:
The
Everglades,
Florida,
and
the
Politics
of
Paradise.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007.

Hahamovitch, Cindy.
The
Fruits
of
Their
Labor:
Atlantic
Coast
Farmworkers
and
the
Making
of
Migrant
Poverty,
1875–1945.
Chapel Hil : University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

Mohl, Raymond A.
South
of
the
South:
Jewish
Activists
and
the
Civil
Rights
Movement
in
Miami,
1945–1960
. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004.

Mormino, Gary R.
Land
of
Sunshine,
State
of
Dreams:
A
Social
History
of
Modern
Florida.

Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005.

528 · Raymond A. Mohl and Gary R. Mormino

Nol , Steven, and David Tegeder.
The
Ditch
of
Dreams:
The
Cross
Florida
Barge
Canal
and
the
Struggle
for
Florida’s
Future.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009.

Ortiz, Paul.
Emancipation
Betrayed:
The
Hidden
History
of
Black
Organizing
and
White
Violence
in
Florida
from
Reconstruction
to
the
Bloody
Election
of
1920
. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

Pittman, Craig, and Matthew Waite.
Paving
Paradise:
Florida’s
Vanishing
Wetlands
and
the
Failure
of
No
Net
Loss.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009.

Provenzano, Eugene.
In
the
Eye
of
Hurricane
Andrew.
Gainesvil e: University Press of Florida, 2002.

Rabby, Glenda Alice.
The
Pain
and
the
Promise:
The
Struggle
for
Civil
Rights
in
Tal ahassee,
Florida
. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999.

Revels, Tracy.
A
History
of
Florida’s
Tourism.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2011.

Roberts, Diane.
Dream
State.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004.

Shell-Weiss, Melanie.
Coming
to
Miami:
A
Social
History
. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009.

West, Patsy.
The
Enduring
Seminoles:
From
Al igator
Wrestling
to
Ecotourism.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998.

Ziewitz, Kathyn, and June Wiaz,
Green
Empire:
The
St.
Joe
Company
and
the
Remaking
of
Florida’s
Panhandle
. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006.

proof

Contributors

Amy Turner Bushnel , retired from the Col ege of Charleston, is adjunct associate

professor of history at Brown University and an invited research scholar at the

John Carter Brown Library. She is the author of
The
King’s
Coffer:
Proprietors
of

the
Spanish
Florida
Treasury,
1565–1702
, and
Situado
and
Sabana:
Spain’s
Support
System
for
the
Presidio
and
Mission
Provinces
of
Florida
, and the editor of
Establishing
Exceptionalism:
Historiography
and
the
Colonial
Americas.

William S. Coker (1924–2002) was professor emeritus of history at the University

of West Florida. He is the author or editor of fourteen books, including
Indian

Traders
of
the
Southeastern
Spanish
Borderlands:
Panton,
Leslie
&
Company,
and
John
Forbes
&
Company,
1783–1847
(coauthored with Thomas D. Watson).

proof

David R. Colburn is formerly provost and senior vice president at the Univer-

sity of Florida and has been a member of the University of Florida history fac-