On the day of JFK’s assassination, Walt Disney flew over a promising site in central Florida. From high in the sky, he could see that the construction of I-4, as well as the existing highways, would deliver a huge flow of visitors into a park if he created one. Disneyland in California was successful, but fewer than 5 percent of its visitors traveled from beyond the Mississippi, so Disney knew that there was great potential way out east, but only if he could find the right location.
And then he found it, in the swamps of Orange and Osceola Counties.
But back before there was even a whisper of The Florida Project (as Walt Disney World was referred to in its development stages) on the drawing board, and the interstates had yet to be built, Florida was home to a myriad of roadside attractions designed to lure in travelers as they headed south to chase the sun. Many of these quirky amusements and businesses have quite literally fallen by the wayside on the old routes, but there are those that remain and offer retro charm as well as a real vintage flavor of the state and its natural beauty.
Oh, Henrys
Until 1940, Florida was the least-populated southern state, but it had the second-longest coastline after Alaska. There was much to be explored. In essence, the birth of modern Florida tourism is a tale of three Henrys. Ever since Henry Flagler built a railroad at the end of the 19th Century and began constructing fabulous resort hotels on the Atlantic Coast, the idea of “every day a June Day, full of Sunshine Where Winter Exists in Memory Only” (a 1913 advertising tagline for the Florida East Coast Railway) was appealing to those who could get away from the harsh northern winters.
Henry Plant was doing much the same over on the Gulf Coast, with his sumptuous railroad hotels catering to the affluent vacationer. Florida started out being the winter playground for the wealthy. Then along came Henry Ford and his assembly line, which created many new car owners. Between 1913 and 1927, 14 million affordable cars rolled off the production line. With the new highways that were being built linking Florida with the rest of the country, a new kind of traveler was created: the tin-can tourist.
He might not have much money to spend at fancy resorts and he might have to eat beans out of a can to further economize, but this tourist was on his way to enjoy sunny Florida and ready to soak in all that the tropical state had to offer. This was a time of discovery on the American tourism landscape.
Fatal Attractions
And so, homespun attractions offering a taste of the exotic wildlife that was inherently Florida began to spring up along the roadside. In the early days, the Sunshine State was the place where you could watch rattlesnake handlers jump into a snake pit and “milk” the rattlers for their venom. After the show, visitors with adventurous appetites might buy delicacies such as cans of Rattlesnake in Supreme Sauce and dried and salted Snake Snacks from the gift shop.
For a while in the 1930s they could even send mail postmarked Rattlesnake, Florida, from the local Post Office. This was End’s Rattlesnake Headquarters and Reptilorium, set up by farmer-turned-businessman George End. Sadly, after a lifetime of careful reptile handling, Mr. End met his own end by a fatal snake bite. The anti-venom he self-administered was out of date and he died on July 27, 1944, within hours of being bitten.
End’s widow sold the snake business onto herpetologist Ross Allen, who established a Reptile Institute at Silver Springs, where scientific research was conducted as a side to the entertainments. Visitors would watch Allen wrangle with huge anacondas, and Seminole Indians recruited from the Everglades would wrestle with frightening alligators. It was the era in which tourists seemed to enjoy seeing men tussling with wild animals.
In 1948, Bob and Mae Noelle parked their traveling animal show and opened Noelle’s Ark, starring ‘the world’s only athletic ape’. Chimpanzees would box or pummel volunteers prepared to get into a cage, and fight with them. Not surprisingly, the chimp would always win. And even less surprisingly, this infamous roadside attraction, with a reputation for being one of the worst roadside zoos, was forced to close. It later reopened as the Suncoast Primate Sanctuary, with an emphasis on providing a retirement haven for animals who have worked in the entertainment industry.
Bongoland was a small park in Port Orange named after its resident baboon. It opened in 1948 on the site of the Dunlawton Sugar Mill ruins. The first dermatologist in Daytona Beach, Dr. Jerry Sperber, was a man with no expertise in running a tourist attraction but had a keen interest in prehistoric life (he even wrote a book called Sex and the Dinosaur). So, acting on his passion, he decided to open a park with diverse features, such as a replica Seminole village, a miniature train ride and some dinosaurs created from chicken wire and concrete. Sadly, after just four years, Bongoland closed its gates. It’s now a botanical garden, although the deteriorating dinosaurs, covered with moss, can still be spotted amongst the exotic plants. It is just possible to make out a sign hanging on one of them that reads “closed for lack of public interest.”
Over the decades there have been many attractions that sought to bring a Western flavor to Florida. Among them were Ocala’s Six Gun Territory, Panama City’s Old Laredo, and Pioneer City in Fort Lauderdale. They all offered features such as stagecoach rides, Indian trading posts, mock gunfights between cowboy actors and saloon supper shows.
The Aquatarium at St Pete Beach opened in 1964 and billed itself as the “World’s Largest Marine Attraction.” On prime Gulf of Mexico frontage, it echoed Miami’s Seaquarium with its shows presenting jumping porpoises, leaping dolphins — especially the star performer Floppy, who could jump 25 feet into the air—and pilot whales, who performed in the world’s largest seawater marine tank under a 1600-foot-tall golden geodesic dome. The impact of Disney was felt a little more each year, though, and the attraction was rebranded as Shark World, hoping to capitalize on the popularity of the movie Jaws. This proved to be unsuccessful, and after a failed attempt to add waterslides to the attraction, it was forced to close at the end of the 1977 summer season.
Cue the Mermaids
But a different type of marine life has kept a park that opened in the 1940s afloat. Florida has more springs than anywhere else on the planet, and one of the most beautiful is at Weeki Wachee Springs State Park. It’s a First Magnitude spring: the deepest explored freshwater spring in the northern hemisphere, discharging 117 million gallons of fresh water per day from a cave opening 100 feet below the surface. It’s over 37 million years old, and, at 99.8 purity, with a constant temperature of 74 degrees, it’s the perfect place to find mermaids.
Back in 1947, a former Navy frogman and expert swimmer/ diver called Newt Perry was scouting for a location to take his vision of balletic synchronized swimming underwater. He had grown up playing in the beautiful Silver Springs, becoming a member of the Florida Gators swimming and diving team. He appeared in early newsreel films showing off his aquatic talents (which included drinking sodas and eating bananas under water) and performing stunts for the Tarzan movies that were filmed locally in the late 1930s. And then an opportunity arose for him to develop his dream at Weeki Wachee, close to US19, one of the major routes through Florida.
“At that time people were using the Springs as a dump. There were cars, refrigerators and whatever in there. So, for a couple of years Newt and a colleague—a guy named Ricou Browning, who ended up being The Creature from the Black Lagoon—cleaned out the Spring. Newt invented the self-regulated air hose breathing apparatus that we still use to this day,” said John Athanason, public relations manager at Weeki Wachee Springs State Park.
Perry recruited a group of synchronized swimmers from St. Petersburg—the Aquabelles—and taught them underwater skills, how to use the air hoses, and how to lure in the visitors from the highway.
“As you drove down US19 you saw the scalloped shell roof and you knew that’s where the world famous Weeki Wachee Mermaids were. This theater is so unique that no one in the world will ever be able to duplicate it,” Athanason continued. “There are laws now that prohibit anyone from sinking a 400-seat theater into a natural spring, but in the ‘50s there were no such laws in existence. Disney couldn’t even do what we have here.”
“You know, the biggest misconception people have is that the mermaids swim in a tank or in an aquarium. That’s not the case. We’re the ones actually sitting in the tank or aquarium,” he continued. “They’re swimming in this 99% pure open spring with five mile per hour current, and the air that they take in keeps them buoyant. They don’t wear weights. Ask Mermaid Vicki here. She’s a complete natural.”
Mermaid Vicki is one of the Legendary Sirens - mermaids of yesteryear who return to the Springs each month for special shows. She enthused about the blue-green world of pure water. “When I was 17, I was sometimes tired and cold and didn’t want to get wet. But the minute I jumped in, I was in another world, and I never wanted to get out. And that’s still true for me today at 80! Plus, I can still do things under water: I can bend over and touch my toes and do dolphin back flips, but I can’t do that on land! When you’re a mermaid, you’re a mermaid for life!”
“By the way,” Vicki leans in and says confidingly, ‘‘I still have the speeding ticket,” and she laughs as she tells how she was arrested on the day she performed for Elvis Presley. “Elvis was coming to the park, and we were told not to be late. We had to be in full makeup, ready for interviews. I’d been out the night before, but I woke up early and I was out the door,” she recalled. “I was driving along this country road in Tampa when all of a sudden, I see these red lights. Now remember, this was back in 1961. The police officer cited me for speeding. I couldn’t believe it! He said, ‘You’ll have to come with me to the station,’ and I said ‘I can’t get in your car. I’m a mermaid and I’m swimming for Elvis Presley today.’ It made me so mad. But he made me get into the police car and I sang ‘Jailhouse Rock’ on the back seat all the way to the station.”
Sunken Treasure
It wasn’t just tourists who visited Florida in the early days: many people headed south looking to catch a piece of the land boom action that swept the state at the beginning of the 20th Century. One was George Turner, a plumber by trade who came to St. Petersburg looking for an opportunity. And he found one. With the creation of Sunken Gardens, one of the area’s most enduring tourist spots that is possibly even the oldest roadside attraction in the whole of the state, Turner struck gold.
Turner knew that he could find plenty of work in the newly incorporated city of St. Petersburg as well as try his hand at the land boom. The newspapers were full of exciting sales announcements, and everybody was buying. He bought a six-acre site with a shallow lake built on an ancient sinkhole. As a plumber he knew how to create a gravity fed drainage system using terracotta pipes (that still run through the gardens today). And as an avid hobby gardener he had the expertise to cultivate exotic plants which flourished in the rich, fertile soil.
He opened Turner’s Papaya Farm in 1911 and sold fruits, vegetables, and other plants, including Royal Palms that eventually grew too large to move. Turner realized that people were more interested in the tall palms and lush botanical gardens that lay beyond his fruit stands, so he charged a small fee for visitors to wander around. Later, he fenced the area and charged a 25-cent admission.
“It was 1935 when he officially opened to the public. It didn’t hurt that he’d opened during the Depression because during that time so many people were looking for escapism of any kind, such as going to the movies. Sunken Gardens had a similar admission fee. People were looking for a beautiful, tranquil place to enjoy and get their mind off their worries,” said Sunken Gardens’ Jennifer Tyson.
The Gardens enjoyed huge popularity during the midcentury decades as one of Florida’s top attractions. In the 1960s an adjacent Mediterranean Revival building that had been a Coca Cola bottling plant was incorporated and turned into the World’s Largest Gift Shop. To keep up with moving times, other features were added over the years.
“We had a wax museum called King of Kings here that started in 1968 and focused primarily on the life of Christ. People were lined up around the corner for that. It was the heyday for that kind of thing. A local woman made all the life size figures by hand and set them in tableaux of the Last Supper and other scenes. It closed in 1995. The last I heard of it was that it was in a museum in Iowa,” added Tyson.
There had been the inevitable decline in visitor numbers as the major theme parks around Orlando soared in popularity, so the Gardens added a typical reptilian Florida feature: Kachunga and the Alligator Show. But trends and tastes for animal shows were changing, too, and the visitor numbers started to dwindle further. The Gardens, which were still family owned and onto the third generation of Turners by then, were put up for sale and looking for a buyer.
“There were different plans that fell through. There was a condominium that was planning on building here so everything would have been razed, which is sadly a typical Florida story. A nudist colony had looked into it, too, and thought it was the perfect place for them—you’ve got the walls, and natural foliage—and some people say that’s really what sparked the neighborhood outcry of “We need to save Sunken Gardens!” People voted to tax themselves one time to give the city enough money—more than $3 million—to buy Sunken Gardens outright so that it would be saved.”
And that’s what happened. Sunken Gardens is now owned by the City of St. Petersburg and is very much a jewel in the city’s crown. The alligators have been replaced with a flock of Chilean flamingos who have joined the original two who have lived in the Gardens since 1956.
The Changing Landscape
The quaintness of roadside Florida has changed considerably since large corporate entertainment complexes arrived and expanded. Weeki Wachee is now owned by the State of Florida. Being owned by cities or the state and being preserved for their cultural and historical significance might be the only way for these parks to survive alongside the competition of Disney and Universal Studios.
“In the early ‘70s when Disney was erected, it was just the Magic Kingdom. When people came to visit, they had a week’s pay and a week’s vacation. So, they came to Orlando, and they saw Disney and in one day they were done. They said, ‘What else do we do?’ So, they traveled and went to see some of the other attractions: Cypress Gardens, Silver Springs — and Weeki Wachee,” added Athanason. “Now you have four Disney parks, two or three Universals, and Sea World. In one week, they can do a different park every day without leaving the city of Orlando. When that happened, a lot of these roadside attractions couldn’t sustain the financial impact.”
Florida is still a tourist magnet for those wishing to escape winter’s wrath as well as families seeking summertime fun. Retirees still set their sights on moving to the Sunshine State, and with 21 million residents, Florida is a lot more crowded than when the early roadside entrepreneurs set up shop. For a place that was originally a swampy peninsula dominated by alligators, the tables have turned, with people now outnumbering them 12 to 1. Things will never be the same.
The evolution of Florida’s roadside attractions has yielded fewer of the kitschy variety, and more mega-parks that keep people locked in for days. It’s hard to fault Walt Disney for recognizing the opportunity that he saw that day from the air. And none can overlook the influence that the three Henrys had a century ago. The tourists have approved, of course, but in the process, it left Florida with only a handful of the old roadside gems that it once boasted.
They are there. You just have to look a little harder to find them.
