History of Florida

The History of Florida stretches from the Spanish discoveries to the 21st century. For current conditions see Florida.

In 1900, Florida was largely agricultural and frontier, most Floridians lived within 50 miles of the Georgia border. The population grew from only 529,000 in 1900 to 18.3 million in 2009. The population explosion began with the great land boom of the 1920s as Florida went from an undiscovered frontier to a land speculator's paradise. When the crash came in 1926 prices of houses plunged (as they did again in 2007–09), but the sunshine remained. Hurt badly by the Great Depression and the land bust, Florida kept afloat with relief money. World War II brought new prosperity and many military bases.

After 1940 Florida saw a contest between the Old South and the New South, as northerners poured in with very different values. The Old South defenders resisted, but numbers were against them, as Yankee retirees, Cuban refugees, Latin American businessmen, Haitian refugees, liberal Jews from New York and fiscal conservatives from the frostbelt poured in at 500 a day, every day, for years. Miami became a bastion of liberalism, drugs and crime, as well as the financial capital of much of Latin America.

## Contents

* 1 Colonial
* 2 20th century
* 2.1 Prohibition
* 2.2 New Deal
* 2.3 Disney World
* 2.4 Hurricanes
* 3 Further reading
* 3.1 Surveys
* 3.2 To 1900
* 3.3 20th century
* 3.4 Cities, regions and environment
* 3.5 Primary sources
* 3.5.1 References

### Colonial[edit]

Spain established a few small settlements in Florida, most of which were soon abandoned. The most important settlement was at St. Augustine, Florida, founded in 1565. It was never more than a fortress, and was repeatedly attacked and burned, with most residents killed or fled. Missionaries converted 26.000 natives by 1655, but a revolt in 1656 and an epidemic in 1659 proved devastating. Pirate attacks were unrelenting against small outposts and even St Augustine. The British and their colonies made war repeatedly. South Carolina launched large scale invasions in 1702 and 1704, which effectively destroyed the Spanish mission system. St Augustine survived, but English-allied Indians such as the Yamasee conducted slave raids throughout Florida, killing or enslaving most of the region's natives. St Augustine itself was captured in 1740. The British and Spanish had been enemies for many decades. The conflicts in Spanish Florida were one part of a larger, global struggle. In the mid-1700s, invading Seminoles killed off most of the remaining local Indians. Florida had about 3000 Spaniards when Britain took control 1763. Nearly all Spaniards quickly left and only a few Britons moved in. Even though in 1783 control was restored to Spain, Spain sent no more settlers or missionaries, and the region was in practice ungoverned and destination of runaway slaves. The US took control in 1819.

## 20th century[edit]

### Prohibition[edit]

Prohibition had been popular in north Florida, and was opposed in the south, which became a haven for speakeasies and run-runners in the 1920s. During 1928-32 a broad coalition of judges, lawyers, politicians, journalists, brewers, hoteliers, retailers, and ordinary wet Floridians came together around the idea of repealing the ban on alcohol. When the federal government legalized near beer and light wine in 1933, the wet coalition launched a successful campaign to legalize these beverages at the state level. Floridians subsequently joined in the national campaign to repeal the 18th Amendment, which succeeded in December 1933. The following November, state voters repealed Florida's constitutional ban on liquor and gave local governments the power to legalize or outlaw alcoholic beverages.[1]

### New Deal[edit]

The New Deal (1933–40) changed and reaffirmed the physical, environmental, and intellectual landscape of south Florida. It ranged from the many hum-drum sewers, roads and schools built by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to the haunting photographs of rural poverty by the Farm Security Administration (FSA), from the Treasury sponsored post office murals to the work camps for the younf men of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and finally to welfare state created by the Social Security program, which brought so many retirees to Florida.

### Disney World[edit]

To get Walt Disney World, Orlando beat out St Louis and several other sites for this experiment in family fun. Disney World opened in 1971 and immediately became Florida's best known attraction, pulling in tems of millions of visitors a year, spinning off other attractions and vast tracts of housing. Disney forced Florida to broaden its social outlook by offering entertainment to all, without regard to race or language. Despite protest from conservative churches, the company has embraced gay and lesbian patrons who descend on the park for the yearly "Gay Day," organized through private travel organizations. Meanwhile, Disney tickets rose from $5.25 in 1975, to $60.00. Tourism does not pay high wages, however, and Orlando has one of the weakest infrastructures in the state; its schools are falling apart.[2]

### Hurricanes[edit]

Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5 hurricane, smashed into the area south of Miami in August 1992, leaving forty people dead, 100,000 homes damaged or destroyed, more than a million people left without electricity, and damages of $20–30 billion. Much of South Florida's sensitive vegetation was severely damaged. The region had not seen a storm of such awesome power in decades. Andrew destroyed complacency and erased any sense of benign ignorance toward hurricanes among South Florida residents.

## Further reading[edit]

### Surveys[edit]

* Colburn, David R. and deHaven-Smith, Lance. Government in the Sunshine State: Florida since Statehood. (1999). 168 pp.
* Colburn, David R. and Landers, Jane L., eds. The African American Heritage of Florida. (1995). 392 pp.
* Fernald, Edward A. and Purdum, Elizabeth, eds. Atlas of Florida. (1992). 280 pp.
* Gannon, Michael, ed. The New History of Florida. (1996). 480 pp.
* Gannon, Michael. Florida: A Short History‎ (2003) 192 pages
* George, Paul S., ed. A Guide to the History of Florida. (1989). 300 pp.

### To 1900[edit]

* Baptist, Edward E. Creating an Old South: Middle Florida's Plantation Frontier before the Civil War. (2002) 408 pp. online review
* Brown, Canter, Jr. Ossian Bingley Hart: Florida's Loyalist Reconstruction Governor. (1997). 320 pp. on reconstruction
* Hoffman, Paul E. Florida's Frontiers. (History of the Trans-Appalachian Frontier series.) (2002). 470 pp.
* Milanich, Jerald T. Florida's Indians from Ancient Times to the Present. (1998). 224 pp.
* Nulty, William H. Confederate Florida: The Road to Olustee. (1990).
* Revels, Tracy J. Grander in Her Daughters: Florida's Women during the Civil War. (2004) 221 pp. online review
* Rivers, Larry Eugene. Slavery in Florida: Territorial Days to Emancipation. (2000). 369 pp. online review
* Rivers, Larry Eugene, and Brown, Canter, Jr. Laborers in the Vineyard of the Lord: The Beginnings of the AME Church in Florida, 1865-1895. (2001). 244 pp. history of the leading black denomination; online review
* Brown, Canter Jr. and Larry Eugene Rivers. For a Great and Grand Purpose: The Beginnings of the AMEZ Church in Florida, 1864-1905.(2004) 268ppl the other large black church online review
* Sprague, John T. The Florida War. (1964), on Seminole war 597 pp.
* Taylor, Robert A. Rebel Storehouse: Florida in the Confederate Economy. (1995). 218 pp. online review

### 20th century[edit]

* Akin, Edward N. Flagler: Rockefeller Partner and Florida Baron. (1988). 305 pp.
* Colburn, David R. and deHaven-Smith, Lance. Florida's Megatrends: Critical Issues in Florida. (2002). 161 pp. online review
* Colburn, David R. From Yellow Dog Democrats to Red State Republicans: Florida and Its Politics since 1940. (2007) 272pp online review
* Colburn, David R. and Scher, Richard K. Florida's Gubernatorial Politics in the Twentieth Century. (1980). 342 pp.
* Crispell, Brian Lewis. Testing the Limits: George Armistead Smathers and Cold War America. (1999). 234 pp. politics in 1950s and 1960s
* Danese, Tracy E. Claude Pepper and Ed Ball: Politics, Purpose, and Power. (2000). 300 pp. politics of 1950s
* Flynt, Wayne. Cracker Messiah: Governor Sidney J. Catts of

Florida. (1977). 359 pp. Democratic governor 1917-21

* Kallina, Edmund F., Jr. Claude Kirk and the Politics of Confrontation. (1993). 253 pp. Republican governor 1967-71
* Kleinberg, Eliot. War in Paradise: Stories of World War II in Florida. (1999). 96pp.
* Klingman, Peter D. Neither Dies nor Surrenders: A History of the Republican Party in Florida, 1867-1970. (1984). 233 pp.
* McCarthy, Kevin M. Baseball in Florida. (1996). 272 pp.
* Manley, Walter M., and Canter Brown. The Supreme Court of Florida, 1917-1972. (2006). 428 pp. online review * Newton, Michael. The Invisible Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Florida. (2001). 260 pp.
* Mormino, Gary. Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams: A Social History of Modern Florida. (2005) 474 pp. online review
* Riley, Nano, and Davida Johns. Florida's Farmworkers in the Twenty-First Century.;; (2002) 225pp. online review
* Rowe, Anne E. The Idea of Florida in the American Literary

Imagination. (1986). 159 pp.

* Stuart, John A., and John F. Stack, eds. The New Deal in South Florida: Design, Policy, and Community Building, 1933-1940. 263 pp. online review
* Vickers, Raymond B. Panic in Paradise: Florida's Banking Crash of 1926. (1994). 336 pp.
* Wagy, Tom R. Governor LeRoy Collins of Florida: Spokesman of

the New South. (1985). 264 pp. Democratic governor 1955-61

### Cities, regions and environment[edit]

* Barnes, Jay. Florida's Hurricane History. (1998). 330 pp.
* Barnett, Cynthia. Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S. (2007). 240 pp. online review
* Bartley, Abel A. Keeping the Faith: Race, Politics, and Social Development in Jacksonville, Florida, 1940-1970. (2000). 177 pp. online edition
* Brown, Canter, Jr. Tampa in the Civil War and Reconstruction. (2000). 246 pp.
* Brown, Canter, Jr. In the Midst of All That Makes Life Worth Living: Polk County, Florida, to 1940. (2001). 325 pp. online review
* Brown, Canter, Jr. None Can Have Richer Memories: Polk County, Florida 1940-2000 (2005) online review
* Croucher, Sheila L. Imagining Miami: Ethnic Politics in a Postmodern World. (1997). 235 pp.
* Drobney, Jeffrey. Lumbermen and Log Sawyers: Life, Labor, and Culture in the North Florida Timber Industry, 1830-1930. (1997). 241 pp.
* Dunn, Marvin. Black Miami in the Twentieth Century. (1997). 414 pp.
* Faherty, William Barnaby Florida's Space Coast: The Impact of NASA on the Sunshine State. (2002) 224pp online review
* García, María Cristina. Havana USA: Cuban Exiles and Cuban Americans in South Florida, 1959-1994. (1996). 290 pp. online review
* Hann, John H. Apalachee: The Land between the Rivers. (1988). 450 pp.
* Kerstein, Robert. Politics and Growth in Twentieth-Century Tampa. (2001). 440 pp.
* McCally, David. The Everglades: An Environmental History. (1999). 215 pp.
* McNally, Michael J. Catholic Parish Life on Florida's West Coast, 1860-1968. (1996). 503 pp.
* McNally, Michael J. Catholicism in South Florida, 1868-1968. (1982). 316 pp.
* Miller, James J. An Environmental History of Northeast Florida. (1998). 223 pp.
* Moore, Deborah Dash. To the Golden Cities: Pursuing the American Jewish Dream in Miami and L.A. (1994). 358 pp.
* Mormino, Gary Ross and Pozzetta, George E. The Immigrant World of Ybor City: Italians and Their Latin Neighbors in Tampa, 1885-1985. (1987). 368 pp.
* Muir, Helen. Miami, USA. (1953) 355 pp.
* Portes, Alejandro and Stepick, Alex. City on the Edge: The Transformation of Miami. (1993). 281 pp.
* Portes, Alejandro and Rumbaut, Rubén G. Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation. (2001). 406 pp. children of immigrants in Miami
* Provenzo, Eugene F., and Asterie Baker Provenzo. In the Eye of Hurricane Andrew. (2002). 184 pp. online review
* Williams, John M. and Duedall, Iver W. Florida Hurricanes and Tropical Storms, 1871-2001. (2002). 176 pp. online review

### Primary sources[edit]

* Romans, Bernard. A Concise Natural History of East and West Florida. ed. by Kathryn E. Holland Braund, (1999). 442 pp. online review travel in 1770s

#### References[edit]

1. ↑ John J. Guthrie, Jr., "Rekindling The Spirits: From National Prohibition to Local Option in Florida: 1928-1935," Florida Historical Quarterly 1995 74(1): 23-39. 0015-4113
2. ↑ Richard Foglesong, Married to the Mouse: Walt Disney World and Orlando (2001); Mormino (2005)