PARADISE RECLAIMED: THE END OF FRONTIER FLORIDA AND THE BIRTH OF A MODERN STATE, 1900-1940 by SCOTT A. SUAREZ KARI FREDERICKSON, COMMITTEE CHAIR JEFFREY MELTON GEORGE RABLE JOSHUA ROTHMAN LISA DORR A DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History in the Graduate School of The University of Alabama TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA 2016 Copyright Scott A. Suarez 2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT The question of whether Florida remained a frontier region well into the twentieth century is examined. For the purposes of this study, the concept of a frontier is not based on geography, but on social perception and infrastructural development. Specific areas of interest include disease prevention, the development of roads and railroads, promotional literature, and advertising as a state sponsored business. Data gathered in pursuit of these questions comes from a variety of sources. A broad selection of Florida newspapers are combined with a detailed examination of the papers of several governors, a selection of prominent businessmen and boosters, and the personal recollections of individuals interviewed by the Works Progress Administration. Also included are travel accounts, promotional publications by individual towns and cities, and a selection of photographs and illustrations from the era. There are several limitations on the depth of the research, primarily due to the loss of materials in several disasters, both man-made and natural. The WPA also interviewed only a handful of individuals, resulting in a rather meager selection of recollections. The ultimate conclusion is that Florida was very much a frontier, both physically and psychologically, until the Great Depression of the 1930s. At that point, the state was fully integrated into the United States and ceased to be a place apart. There is more work to be done, with greater emphasis on federal legislation and perhaps starting earlier in the nineteenth century, should anyone wish to delve deeper. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to take this opportunity to thank several people whose assistance, encouragement, and faith have made this all possible. Foremost among them is Kari Frederickson, my committee chair, who took my on as a student when I was casting about and uncertain of whether I would even seek a doctorate or content myself with a master’s degree. Her years of guidance and advice helped shape a disorganized mess into a dissertation I am proud to call my own. I would also like to thank my committee members, George Rable, Joshua Rothman, Lisa Dorr, and Jeff Melton, for their consideration and insight. A special thanks goes to Josh Rothman, who holds the distinction of presiding over the most difficult and most enjoyable graduate class I had the privilege to attend; I have never written for a tougher opponent, and my writing has improved immeasurably as a result. I would also like to thank my fellow graduate students at the University of Alabama. We struggled together, and seeing each of you succeed kept me going. I cannot forget my family, who endured my bouts of desperation as deadlines approached and never let me give in to despair. Lastly, I need to mention Professor Jim Jones of Florida State. When I was an undergraduate with no concept of what I wanted to do with my life, he showed me what a professor’s life could be and inspired me to follow his example. None of this would have been possible without him, and he has my profound and eternal thanks. iii CONTENTS ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................ ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................... iii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ...................................................................................v INTRODUCTION: SWAMPS, SNAKES, SIX-GUNS, AND SUNSHINE ..........1 CHAPTER ONE: WAR ON THE SOUTHERN FRONTIER .............................26 CHAPTER TWO: DISEASE, DISASTER, AND DEVELOPMENT .................59 CHAPTER THREE: A SMALLER WORLD ......................................................92 CHAPTER FOUR: FLORIDA’S FRONTIER APOTHEOSIS ..........................144 CHAPTER FIVE: FORWARD UNTO DAWN .................................................182 CONCLUSION: A LONG ROAD .....................................................................226 REFERENCES ....................................................................................................234 iv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Paradise Regained .............................................................................................. vi 2. American Progress...............................................................................................3 3. Gold....................................................................................................................18 4. Peter O. Knight ..................................................................................................25 5. 8th Infantry Camp ...............................................................................................50 6. Yellow Fever ......................................................................................................61 7. City Streets, 1900 ...............................................................................................75 8. Royal Palm Hotel ...............................................................................................82 9. Camphor Laurel Tree .......................................................................................108 10. Independently Wealthy ..................................................................................145 11. Miami and Miami Beach ...............................................................................150 12. Florida Real Estate Ads .................................................................................180 13. National Real Estate Ads ...............................................................................181 v Illustration 1: Paradise Regained. The imagery of Florida as a pristine wilderness to be tamed was quite common in turn of the century publications like this map of the Florida East Coast Railway circa 1898.1 1 Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, [2003627030] vi INTRODUCTION: SWAMPS, SNAKES, SIX-GUNS, AND SUNSHINE “The first day I arrived, because of a very trivial incident, a man came very near being murdered and, except for the foresight of some bystanders, someone would have been shot for almost nothing.” That incident in 1884, recounted some fifty years later by attorney Peter O. Knight, would not have seemed out of place had it described a mining town in the Hollywood version of the Old West, or perhaps some distant settlement so isolated from the rest of the nation that it barely qualified as civilization. But Knight’s offhand remark referred to Fort Meyers in South Florida, not a location generally associated with the sort of rough-and-tumble existence of an untamed frontier. Knight’s first day was not to be his only encounter with danger, however. The lawyer recalled that every time he arrived at the courthouse to perform his job “I was threatened beforehand that… I would be shot or killed, or something.” In truth, life in Florida as the nineteenth century drew to a close was every bit as tenuous as it could be on the western frontier. The only real difference was the mosquitoes.1 It is ironic that even as Knight was negotiating the difficulties of life in a settlement far from the industrial center of the nation, Frederick Jackson Turner was likely ruminating on the ideas that would be crystallized into his frontier thesis as delivered in 1893. The progenitor of 1 Peter O. Knight to Carl Hanton, November 27, 1934, Peter O. Knight Scrapbooks, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainesville (hereafter Knight Scrapbooks, UF) 1 frontier scholarship, Turner would probably not have regarded Florida as a frontier, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. For Turner’s vision, the frontier was a series of still images that showcased the advance of civilization into the savage realm of the natives, an intellectual equivalent to John Gast’s 1872 painting American Progress. Implicit in this concept was the notion of the “noble savage” who was closer to man’s unadjusted state, and lived in a sort of pristine wilderness. The process of developing, and eventually closing, the frontier was thus a series of evolutionary stages that would transform the unblemished (but culturally inferior) natives into good stewards of civilization, while simultaneously transmuting the vast wilderness and making it suitable for the rise of new cities to rival the great metropolises like New York and Chicago, the latter only recently emerging from the darkness of the frontier as Turner wrote. In Turner’s view, “the frontier is the outer edge of the wave – the meeting point between savagery and civilization.” However, even as he first delivered his address in 1893, Turner admitted that as a precise term the word ‘frontier’ was lacking, too elastic to be easily used. In Europe, for example, he noted that frontiers were fortified borders between nations; such a definition was hardly of any real use for the United States, save perhaps with Mexico and Canada. To better understand Turner, his subsequent critics, and Florida during the metamorphosis which transpired between 1890 and 1940, a more detailed