How the New Deal Built Florida Tourism

Abstract

In How the New Deal Built Florida Tourism, David Nelson examines the creation of modern Florida tourism through the state and federal government during the Great Depression. And more specifically, with the Florida civic-elite’s use of the Federal New Deal to develop state parks in order to re-boot Florida’s depressed tourist industry. The Florida Park Service is financially, thematically, ideally, and literally a direct product of the New Deal, as the Civilian Conservation Corps funded, designed, and in large ran the state park program. And the same can be said for much of modern Florida tourism, as well. So many of our current concerns—environment change and overdevelopment, Florida’s ongoing north-south cultural and political divide, ideas of what constitutes the “Real Florida,” and the continued fascination with the mythical “Florida Cracker”—have their origins in the 1930s. With such a focus, this book addresses three previously underserved topics—the creation of the Florida Park Service, the development and work of the Civilian Conservation Corps in Florida, and a case study of the New Deal in Florida. Florida in the Great Depression has been largely ignored by historians when compared to other eras. But as this book will demonstrate, the New Deal era was in fact crucial to the creation of modern Florida.