Paradise for Sale

by Nick Wynne

  Published by The History Press

  Charleston, SC 29403

  www.historypress.net

  Copyright © 2010 by Nick Wynne and Richard Moorhead

  All rights reserved

  First published 2010

  e-book edition 2011

  ISBN 978.1.61423.141.7

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Wynne, Nick.

  Paradise for sale : Florida’s booms and busts / Nick Wynne and Richard Moorhead.

  p. cm.

  print edition ISBN 978-1-59629-844-6

  1. Florida--History, Local. 2. Florida--Biography. 3. Real estate development--Florida--History. I. Moorhead, Richard, 1943- II. Title.

  F311.W96 2010

  975.9--dc22

  2009050442

  Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  For Debra and Lisa Wynne

  For Sandy Moorhead

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  Chapter 1. An American Eden

  Chapter 2. Priming the Pump

  Chapter 3. World War Primes the Pump Even More

  Chapter 4. The Truth about Florida Is a Lie!

  Chapter 5. Going Full Bore: Selling the Boom

  Chapter 6. A City from Whole Cloth: Carl Graham Fisher

  Chapter 7. George Edgar Merrick

  Chapter 8. David P. Davis: The Island Maker

  Chapter 9. Addison Mizner

  Chapter 10. Lesser Lights and Smaller Fry

  Chapter 11. Every Little Nook and Cranny

  Chapter 12. Shut Your Damn Mouth!

  Chapter 13. It Is Over!

  Chapter 14. Of Bottom Feeders and Small Bumps

  Chapter 15. A New War—A New Boom?

  Epilogue

  A Brief Note on Sources

  About the Authors

  Acknowledgements

  Any author knows that there are people who provide tremendous insights and assistance on any writing project. It certainly is true in this instance. We are deeply indebted to Sandy Moorhead, Debra Wynne, June Geiger, Peggy Ryals, George “Speedy” Harrell, Jack Rabun, Ada E. Parrish and the staff and volunteers of the Florida Historical Society Library in Cocoa for helping us run down pictures and books. We are also grateful for the “laying on of hands” that they occasionally performed on the manuscript.

  We are especially grateful for the many authors who have written on this topic in the past and for their research.

  Introduction

  Stealing from one writer,” Wilson Mizner is reputed to have said, “is plagiarism. Stealing from many is research.” If that is true, this book is well researched. The story of Florida’s boom and subsequent bust of the 1920s is a story that has been told often and exceedingly well, but with the exception of David Nolan’s Fifty Feet in Paradise, it is a story that has been told in pieces. We hope this book will help consolidate the story even more.

  The first impression a listener or reader gets when discovering the boom is that it lasted for many years, but that is not the case. The boom was a short-lived affair, lasting barely twenty-four or so months at its height, but it took two years (1921–23) to get started and another two years (1927–28) to die. However, the years 1925 and 1926 were glorious years, unrivaled in American history, when millions of dollars were tossed around like so much confetti. Far outstripping the fabulous gold and silver rushes of the 1800s and early 1900s in monetary value, the Florida land boom made overnight millionaires a common occurrence and rags-to-riches tales a dime a dozen.

  Virtually every part of the Sunshine State had a leading “boomer” who was responsible for focusing attention on his particular section—Addison Mizner in Palm Beach and Boca Raton, Carl Fisher in Miami Beach, George Merrick in Coral Gables, David P. “Doc” Davis in Tampa and St. Augustine, John Ringling in Sarasota and Barron Collier in southwest Florida. For every giant in the public eye, there were scores of other, lesser-known figures who duplicated their efforts on a smaller scale—Carl Dann Sr. in Orlando, D. Collins Gillette in Temple Terrace, Walter Fuller in St. Petersburg, William J. Howey in Lake County and the list goes on and on.

  Everyone in Florida benefitted from the boom. The price of the average home, away from the hubbub of development communities, rose by a remarkable 200 percent, a feat that remained unsurpassed until the real estate explosion of 2005–06. Jobs were plentiful—so much so that northern contractors brought workers with them, and inmates in Florida jails worked grading streets, unloading ships and completing construction of needed infrastructure. Banks, long distrusted and few in number in 1920, suddenly began to spring up overnight and reported millions of dollars in deposits. Credit was easy to come by, and money poured into the Sunshine State in torrents. Chain banking, a new innovation, gave access to the deposits of northern banks and banks in other southern states. It seemed that only the most slothful could fail to get his fair share.

  People came to Florida by trains, steamships and automobiles. The Model-T Ford became the icon of the period, signifying a major shift in societal dynamics as mobility and freedom replaced stability and tedium. Prohibition, the Jazz Age, gambling, the rise of the middle class, wild stories of fortunes made in minutes and an atmosphere of constant happenings were all disparate elements that cooked in the cauldron that was boom Florida. Greats, near greats, the famous, the infamous, movie stars, politicians, athletes, ne’er-do-wells, preachers, foreign royalty, con artists, educators, labor leaders, union members—every element of American and world society showed up in the Sunshine State. It was a gigantic party. Florida was a perpetual motion machine—destined to go on forever.

  The party and the perpetual motion machine came to a screeching halt in 1927. The Sunshine State, which had offered so much promise just a year earlier, entered the doldrums. For almost two decades, it remained there—baking in the hot sun, scarred by empty subdivisions, decorative arches over roads that led to nowhere and languishing amidst fields of broken promises.

  In the years that followed the 1920s, Floridians eagerly sought to reclaim the halcyon days of that decade and every little surge in the state’s economy quickly became a “boom.” It is still true today—boom, boomlet, bust—all part of the lexicon of Floridians, and all very real parts of the Florida economy. Nevertheless, hope springs eternal!

  CHAPTER 1

  An American Eden

  Oldest of all [states] in its history, it is the youngest of all in its development. But as the acts of Florida’s unmatchable climate, its unrivalled agricultural and horticultural possibilities and its limitless opportunities in commerce and industry become known of all men, it cannot fail to become one of the richest, most populous and influential in the whole family of commonwealths which make up our Nation. The sun of Florida’s destiny has risen, and only the malicious and the short-sighted contend or believe it will ever set.

  —Governor John W. Martin, Foreword, Florida in the Making, 1926

  From the earliest days of European settlement, Florida has been a business venture. Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, the explorer and colonizer who planted the Spanish flag and established St. Augustine, referred to it as “the enterprise of Florida.” And what an enterprise it has been for the past five hundred years! Juan Ponce de León, the discoverer of Florida, has entered popular legen
d as seeking a “fountain of youth” that would give those who drank from it eternal life and perpetual youth—a myth that is not backed by facts, but one that endures nevertheless. Ponce de León’s legend set the standard for many of those who came after him, and myths became an integral part of most promotional campaigns. The wilds of the Florida peninsula—the peninsula was not completely surveyed until the early nineteenth century—held the prospect of always being something more than reality, and the mystery of the unexplored merely fueled the imaginations of those willing to be misled.

  With its acquisition by the United States in 1821, promoters launched a multitude of advertising campaigns to bring settlers and tourists into Florida. There was little to recommend Florida to the American public—three hundred years of occupation by the Spanish and the British had barely pushed the frontier much beyond a line about thirty miles from the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Pensacola and St. Augustine—and to a lesser extent, Fernandina—were the only towns of note, and these were barely larger than many New England villages. The isolation of Americans in Florida changed rapidly, however, as scions of established planting families in the mid- and upper South hurried to claim large blocks of land in North Florida and to use the slaves they brought with them to establish a plantation culture based on the cultivation of cotton and tobacco. By the time Florida became a state in 1845, planters controlled the financial, social and political affairs of the Sunshine State.

  When the call came to secede from the Union in 1860–61, Floridians hastily joined their kinfolk in the other Southern states and cast aside statehood after a brief sixteen years. During the Civil War, thousands of Floridians served on battlefields far removed from their homes. Unable to defend all of Florida, Confederate officials were content to allow Union forces to occupy both coasts and Key West. Only one major battle, Olustee, was fought in Florida, and although that battle resulted in an overwhelming Confederate victory, it did little to halt the continued Union presence in the state.

  Union soldiers in Florida were impressed with what they found. Mostly sunny tropical weather made their service in the state pleasant, while the few colder days of winter were mild when compared to the harsh winters in the North. Tropical foliage, citrus trees that grew with wild abandon and abundant wildlife—to say nothing of the vast tracts of open land—convinced most of these occupying troops that Florida was as close to paradise as any place in the world. The Florida they experienced left vivid memories that drew them back to this “Eden.”

  When the war ended in 1865, Florida experienced a minor population boom. Wealthy planters no longer controlled every aspect of life in the Sunshine State, which left the state open to development by aggressive entrepreneurs and determined farmers. The previously unexplored and largely unsettled lands south of St. Augustine and Ocala, the domain of a relative few cow men before the war, now became a magnet to draw the lower classes from northern cities, as well as disgruntled ex-Confederates eager to suffer the agony of defeat in quiet isolation. Like the vast prairies of the Midwest, Florida offered these individuals a chance to create a new society away from the domination of aristocratic families and factory bosses.

  With little in the way of manufacturing concerns and few mineral resources, early efforts to “sell” Florida centered on the natural resources of the state. Abundant wildlife, a balmy climate and the prospect of producing large and profitable crops featured prominently in the millions of pamphlets and brochures sent out by agricultural associations, land developers and government agencies. So, too, did the plethora of postcards and broadsides produced by the owners of small hotels that lined the rivers of the state. Florida, potential visitors and settlers were informed, was a land that was so fertile that seeds spilled on the ground germinated and produced bumper crops. In fact, so the popular legends went, it was possible to simply come to Florida, construct a rudimentary home and live off the widely available fruits that proliferated endlessly under the nourishing sunshine that bathed the state every day. In practically every area of the state during the late 1800s, utopian dreamers bought land for as little as fifty cents an acre and built communities for those who shared their visions. Although most realized within a few months that a life of ease with little labor was a pipe dream, Florida lost little of its initial appeal, and those who came to farm the land generally stayed. A larger group of individuals who responded to these advertisements realized that the key to success in the Sunshine State was to take advantage of the cheap land prices and work hard.

  Hotel owners stressed the flora and fauna that made Florida an exotic wonderland. Visitors who usually came for a two- or three-month stay could fish the unlimited and unpolluted lakes, lagoons and rivers and, for more excitement, hunt the hammocks that abounded on the peninsula. The absence of seasonal restrictions or limits on kills invited them to engage in an orgy of hunting. Even a few of the more daring sought out the dangerous alligators that lurked at the edges of the myriad bodies of fresh water.

  Florida was marketed as a healthy refuge for those who suffered from arthritis, myalgia and other assorted ills. The perpetually warm climate also lured individuals who suffered from respiratory diseases like croup, asthma and consumption. Across the Sunshine State, small sanatoriums and spas sprang up around the fresh springs that abounded. Many who came stayed after their diseases had gone into remission or went back home to preach the healing virtues of Florida’s climate.

  Despite a continuous stream of propaganda leaflets that flooded the other states, the actual number of permanent new residents to Florida remained low. The absence of passable roads and the necessity to remain close to rivers made settlement difficult; that is, until the 1880s. During that decade, entrepreneurs Henry Flagler and Henry Plant reinvigorated the push for new settlers when they drove railroad lines down the east and west coasts. For the first time, vast new areas opened to settlement. Plant and Flagler sought to bolster the success of their lines by erecting large resort hotels that offered visitors a chance to experience the wilderness of the Sunshine State without giving up any of the luxuries of older, more established resorts. The railroad companies created departments within their corporate structures that had the sole purpose of enticing Americans to come to Florida. The coffers of the railroads and their hotels depended on how well these departments did the job, and both Plant and Flagler hired the best persons for the job. Organized sports—golf, sailing, polo—became the linchpin of the advertising campaigns for the resorts, and although many of the ads showed great expanses of beaches, practically none actually touted them as places to have fun. That would come later.

  Prior to the 1920s, the majority of hotels in Florida were usually wooden structures with twenty-five to forty rooms that offered visitors the opportunity to hunt, fish and enjoy nature. This photograph of the Rockledge House Hotel (circa 1895) was typical. Note the young woman with the shotgun standing in front of the steps. Courtesy of the Florida Historical Society.

  Henry Plant’s Tampa Bay Hotel cost $3 million to build and contained furnishings purchased in Europe for more than $1 million. The grounds of the hotel featured a nine-hole golf course, hunting grounds, a casino and wildlife such as deer and turkeys—all just a stone’s throw across the narrow Hillsboro River from the city of Tampa. Courtesy of the Moorhead Collection.

  Of course, smaller hotels, owned by independents, benefited from the buzz created by the railroads. Piggybacking on the lavish advertisements of the corporate giants, they generated their own ads. It was practically impossible to pick up a newspaper north of the Mason-Dixon line without being assaulted by a multiplicity of ads for Florida hotels, urban developments and productive farmlands.

  Very quickly, however, the railroads realized that the income generated by passengers and by hotel guests would not be sufficient to pay the operating costs of the roads nor to produce a profit for shareholders. To be successful, the roads had to find customers for the large tracts of land awarded by the state for each mile
of railroad construction. Much as the railroads had done in the American West, the corporations formed land companies to market the raw acreage they owned. Because much of their holdings were located in rural areas, railroad companies stressed the desirability of owning a farm in this modern Garden of Eden. Testimonials from prominent public figures and satisfied owners filled the advertising brochures mailed to millions of Americans. Civic organizations, financial advisors, churches and virtually any other recognized group with a mailing address repeatedly received mass mailings about the wonders of Florida. Local boards of trade extolled the economic benefits of Florida, but these brochures, usually filled to overflowing with dry facts on farm production, transportation and land costs, were difficult reading. Nevertheless, they contributed to the massive effort to sell the Sunshine State.

  Hotelier and railroad magnate Henry Plant loved the game of golf and frequently played it with guests of his hotels. Notice the formal dress of the individual players. Courtesy of the Moorhead Collection.

  Once again, smaller landowners tied on to the campaigns of the railroads, and the Florida “land boom,” which would last until the 1920s, was underway. Businessmen and governmental departments combined as chambers of commerce to promote the state, while professional associations of farmers cooperated with the promotional efforts by utilizing brightly colored labels on their products that also stressed only positive aspects of the Florida experience. Oranges, celery, corn and pineapples received their share of the limelight, and potential farm buyers were assured that with just a little work they could be successful.

  Certainly, Florida had its share of individuals and entrepreneurs seeking to mine the bright sunshine and open spaces of the Sunshine State and to convert them into hard cash. Like some exotic El Dorado, Florida beckoned adventuresome rogues and visionaries to its shores, and many came with schemes that they thought would make them fortunes overnight. While some of these individuals were earnest and honest, some were less worried about morals and more concerned with making a dollar. Because of actions by less scrupulous promoters, “buying Florida land” became the accepted equivalent of “purchasing the Brooklyn Bridge,” but even this new addition to the American lexicon did little to hurt their marketing success. Only later, when the United States experienced the Great Depression, was the full impact of this humorous warning appreciated.