Exploring the Culture, Coasts, and Hidden Corners of Florida
The oldest masonry fort in the continental U.S. wasn’t built from brick. It was built from rock hauled out of a pit in what’s now Anastasia State Park. That pit—the Anastasia Coquina Quarry—still sits quietly beneath the live oaks, one…
In the 1960s, Coral Springs was farmland. Not a suburb with farmland nearby—just pure, flat tomato and bean fields, 20 miles west of the ocean and not much else. In fact, the city’s very first structure was a covered bridge…
When the Apollo 11 rocket launched in 1969, a crowd stood barefoot on the dunes of what is now Canaveral National Seashore, shielding their eyes from the sun and the flame. They were closer than anyone watching from a screen.…
In the 1950s, Miramar was a sleepy grid of concrete block houses built by a developer who named the city after a stretch of Cuban coastline. Today, over half the population traces its roots to the Caribbean—and the vibe? It’s…
In 1905, orchid thief Henry Deland was caught with over 500 rare ghost orchids stuffed into burlap sacks—many plucked from what would later become Big Cypress National Preserve. The fragile white blossoms, nearly invisible against the misty swamp, were once…
In 1911, a team of paleontologists unearthed the fossil of a giant sloth just outside Gainesville. The bones belonged to an ancient creature that once lumbered through Florida’s swamps before humans ever set foot on the peninsula. Today, that skeleton…
In the 1600s, Spanish missionaries stumbled across a spring in North Florida that flowed so clean and constant, they called it a “river from the heavens.” The Timucua had already been using the crystal-clear waterway for generations—for fishing, healing, and…
In the 1920s, a man named Joseph W. Young envisioned a city that would rival its Californian cousin. He bought swampland between Miami and Fort Lauderdale and called it Hollywood by the Sea. His dream? To create a movie-set town…
In 1908, industrialist Henry Flagler stood on the deck of his private railcar and looked out at a stretch of Florida coastline that barely seemed real. His grand project—the Overseas Railroad—was stitching its way down the Keys, and Bahia Honda…
In 1961, a bulldozer cleared a path through pine scrub near Florida’s Atlantic coast and kicked off one of the state’s most peculiar urban experiments: a fully master-planned city with no downtown, no beach, and no past. Just sand, promise,…