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Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School
2013 Losing Home: Why Rural Northwest Florida Needs to Be Saved Zena S. Riley-Taylor
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COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
LOSING HOME:
WHY RURAL NORTHWEST FLORIDA NEEDS TO BE SAVED
By
ZENA S. RILEY-TAYLOR
A Thesis submitted to the American and Florida Studies Program in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts
Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2013 Zena S. Riley-Taylor defended this thesis on April 1, 2013. The members of the supervisory committee were:
Neil Jumonville Professor Directing Thesis
Frederick Davis Committee Member
Jennifer Koslow Committee Member
The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the thesis has been approved in accordance with university requirements.
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Dedicated to Zandt and all the little ones to come after us…may there be enough left of the rural life for you to enjoy; and to the memory of my grandmothers, Mattie Brackin Reeves and Pearlie Mae Riley…two of the hardest-working women I have ever known (whom I never once heard complain)
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to acknowledge and thank my committee: Dr. Neil Jumonville for taking me on in the middle of this—thanks for your patience, guidance, and constructive criticism; Dr. Frederick (Fritz) Davis, and Dr. Jennifer Koslow. Also, Dr. Elna Green, my former chair; Dr. James P. (Jim) Jones, who intimidated me a bit, but I am still in awe of his lecturing style (and teaching for over 50 years!); and Dr. John Fenstermaker for seeing that “twinkle in my eye” and allowing my entry into the American and Florida Studies program.
Thank you to all of the hard-working state employees at the Florida Department of Transportation, especially those who have asked about this project and supported my studies along the way. A special thank you to Mary Anne Koos, my Bicycle/Pedestrian mentor; Dave Blodgett, for sending me the Lines South article about the railroads; Amanda Marshall; and my lunch pals, BB, Lynn, and Howie (for the continual prodding to finish). At the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, my thanks to Robin Birdsong for the referral on Luray, Virginia.
In looking back over my complete academic life, I must acknowledge the wonderful teachers that I have had since August 1985. To name a few…Mrs. Lorna Raper, the late Lynvol Wilkerson, Mrs. Daisy Wilkerson, Mrs. Linda Martin, Mrs. Roberta Grantham. A special thank you to Mrs. Dianne Smith, my Senior English teacher at Holmes County High School, who had faith in my writing ability and inspired me to set higher goals. Teachers are so important and don’t get many thank you’s—so here is a really big one.
Thank you to all of my extended family and friends, but especially related to this work: Aunt P and Uncle Henry (for hopscotch in the dirt road, the dream of owning land, and the many times I sought advice from you both), and Uncle Red (fishing trips on the Choctawhatchee and “making memories”)—which is all part of the rural life;
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Aunt Agnes and Uncle Wayne (for a home away from home in Tallahassee); Carmen (for believing I could finish this). To Granny Reeves, thank you for helping raise us, for your love, and stories of days on the farm. I love you and miss you like crazy.
Thank you to my sisters, Jenna and Brannigan, for a wonderful childhood of phenomenal playmates and memories; even though I am the big sister, I am so proud of you two for your accomplishments and you both continue to inspire me. I am so happy that we will have three little boys to raise together; love to Richard, Atticus, Yancy, and Jetzen (coming soon!).
To Mama and Daddy—where do I begin? Thank you for being my first teachers and my best teachers, for telling me that I could when I said I couldn’t, for practicing for the spelling bees, for coming to my games, for coaching my games, and especially for the family trips in “Old Faithful,” a.k.a. the van, all over the country—I believe this is where my love of history began—and thank you for patiently waiting while I read every plaque at the museums. Most of all, thank you for your involvement, love, and support in a world when so many children don’t have anyone to care.
To the Creator, for giving us nature and the land, if we only know what to do with it.
And finally, to my wonderful husband, Brandon, for passionately caring about this topic as much as I do, walking this journey with me, making me laugh, and enhancing my strengths while covering my weaknesses—thank you for being the man and best friend that I waited so many years to find, and to my little Zandt, for being the most inspirational and beautiful thing in my life—you both are my life. I hope that someday you will read this and I will have made you proud. You gave me the push I needed to complete this effort. Thank God for you.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Figures ...... vii Abstract ...... viii
PREFACE ...... 1
1. INTRODUCTION ...... 3
2. FARMING, FAMILY, FREEDOM: WHAT THE LAND MEANT TO EARLY AMERICAN SETTLERS ...... 11 Homesteads, Plantations, and Indians ...... 16 “From the Fields to the Factories” and the Movement Toward Southern Independence .....24
3. TREES, TRACKS, AND TOURISM: THE CHANGING OF THE LAND POST CIVIL- WAR ...... 27 Florida “Develops” and Divides into North and South ...... 41
4. SMALL VS. SPRAWL: RURAL LAND’S VALUE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY ...... 56 Panhandle Assets: Environment, Rural Character, Agrarian Heritage ...... 67
5. MANAGING GROWTH: WORKING TO SAVE THE PANHANDLE’S RURAL PLACES AND QUALITY OF LIFE ...... 89 Rural Conservation and Land-Use Planning ...... 94 Downtown Revitalization and Historic Preservation ...... 104
6. CONCLUSION ...... 109
EPILOGUE ...... 113
APPENDIX ...... 117
A. PERMISSION LETTERS ...... 117
REFERENCES ...... 122
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 137
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1-1 Map of Northwest Florida Counties and Cities ...... 10
Figure 3-1 Hyer-Knowles Planing Mill Chimney, Pensacola, Florida ...... 32
Figure 3-2 Hyer-Knowles informational plaque, Pensacola, Florida ...... 33
Figure 3-3 Galt City Advertisement, circa 1885 ...... 53
Figure 3-4a Jefferson County, Florida, Advertisement (Front), 1887 ...... 54
Figure 3-4b Jefferson County, Florida, Advertisement (Back), 1887 ...... 55
Figure 4-1 2010 Census Florida Population Density ...... 60
Figure 4-2 Shipes-Holley House prior to move and restoration ...... 82
Figure 4-3 Shipes-Holley House after move to park, prior to restoration ...... 83
Figure 4-4 Shipes-Holley House after move to park and restoration, Front ...... 83
Figure 4-5 Shipes-Holley House after move to park and restoration, Rear ...... 84
Figure 4-6 “Cowboy pushing a baby carriage through the corral-Bonifay, Florida,” 1949 ...... 88
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ABSTRACT
Land use in Florida has seen many changes since it became an American territory in 1821. But while land use can be a categorical term for classifying property, it can also take on a more valuable meaning. When the land was originally opened up for frontier settlers and wealthy planters to farm in the early years, it usually meant family and freedom as individuals and large kinship networks migrated south to establish homesteads and plantations. This population was mostly concentrated in Middle Florida or the northern part of the state. Leading up to the Civil War, cotton was obviously a royal crop and a manufacturing movement emerged to support the momentum toward Southern independence. However, the aftermath of the Civil War seems to be a turning point for the dominantly agrarian region as timber, railroads, and tourism changed the way residents used the land. While Northwest Florida retained agriculture as a major part of the economy, the peninsula became more developed and populated, mostly with wealthy Northern tourists, and in effect, the state transformed into two distinct regions with very different environments and cultures. Comparisons between the two sections are made throughout the study to illustrate lessons that can be learned from one to the other. Sprawl, congestion, and overdevelopment’s assault on the environment are common concerns. My focus for this study is to show how land use and essentially rural life changed for those individuals who were accustomed to subsistence farming in Northwest Florida. Land prices, a decline in farm acreage, population distribution, and suburbanization exhibit this transformation. In addition, the intention is to show the assets of the Panhandle through its environment, rural character, and agrarian heritage which equates into a revered quality of life. The rural places of Northwest Florida deserve protection from inappropriate and misplaced development using rural land conservation and land-use planning techniques while revitalizing towns and cities that have already been developed and preserving the region’s vast historical resources for future generations.
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PREFACE
The land that makes up Florida has always had an alluring effect on those seeking a new adventure. Its wild features and virgin landscapes once won the hearts of those looking for a new start and tempted those who wished to attempt to conquer it with “improvements” to make “better” use of the land. Native Indians, Spanish, English, and Americans have all inhabited the land, but it was when the United States acquired the territory in 1821 that the work of making the land realize its “improved” potential commenced, being concentrated in the northern section of the state. Thus, American ownership is where this study begins and the focus is on Northwest Florida not because it was where most of the settlement occurred in the nineteenth century and holds the chosen capital city, but because it is still mostly rural in nature and has somehow been miraculously spared the overdevelopment that Central and South Florida have experienced. Since Flagler and the wealthy Northern elites of the 1880s and 1890s began to seek winter havens and later permanent relocation, the southern portion of the state has experienced an explosion in population while Northwest Florida remained sparsely populated, having a substantial mix of leftover descendants of Scots-Irish pioneers, freed slaves, and Native tribes. The research of this work concentrates on land use not only by the individual pioneer who moved into and survived from the land but also the larger and wealthier forces that affected the region. These forces generally had more to do with what the land could be used for (i.e., crops such as cotton, internal improvements such as roads, canals, and railroads) and what could be extracted from the land, such as timber or even native peoples who were holding up “progress.” Railroads led to the creation of towns and manufacturing mills led to many farming families moving into company towns, relinquishing independence for security, which came as a surprise to me since I have always romanticized the nostalgic idea of independence through growing your own food and the family connections to the land. Suburbanization after World War II played a major role in changing rural America and Northwest Florida was no exception. Tourism played an endearing role along the Panhandle’s coast from the 1930s and even into the 1990s while Disney World and other large theme parks completely changed Central Florida. Comparisons between the southern and northern portion of the state uncover two very different Florida’s and the intent is to show that Northwest Florida can learn lessons from its southern counterpart—such as looking at natural environment (the
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draining of the Everglades), historic resources (bulldozing Cracker style houses) as well as agricultural and farming communities and the rural character that is associated with them, and investigating how we can save the uniqueness that is Northwest Florida. What really ignited my passion and quest for this topic was seeing astronomical land prices during the recent boom in 2005-2008 and large acreages of land, sometimes that had been in families for generations, that were being subdivided and sold, and this troubled me. How could someone sell the land that their grandfather and grandmother worked so hard to obtain, held the very soil (if dug deep enough) in their weary and calloused hands, and supported their family through sustenance? Were there not memories being tossed aside here? Land prices easily reveal the power of real estate’s draw on some to make a profit, especially during times of economic prosperity and land booms. The realtors’ descriptions and marketing techniques were cunning. I also witnessed development companies razing the land without regard to environmental or cultural consequences, and trying to spin it like it was a positive thing for a rural community. Through my research, I confirmed my speculation that tourism and development seem closely tied along the coastal communities and even reach the interior of the Panhandle. Again in Florida’s history, a wealthier tourist/resident is catered to while locals are ignored, and further still, large affluent forces are changing the region’s rural landscape. Furthermore, the land in Northwest Florida is extremely valuable for its historical resources, rural character of its people, and environmental assets. The high quality of life is a recurring theme in this study and solutions including growth management, rural conservation techniques, urban revitalization, and historic preservation are offered in an effort to not only pique the interest of Northwest Floridians but rouse them into action before even more inappropriate and misplaced development divides and devalues the land and what it means to those who call it home.
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Northwest Florida, often referred to as the Panhandle, does not have an official geographic boundary, but the general thought is that it extends from Escambia County to just east of Tallahassee (also part of the Big Bend area) to Jefferson County to form roughly a 16- county region.1 The land that makes up Florida had legally belonged to the Spanish in the 1500s after Ponce de Leon’s landing in St. Augustine, the British as a result of the Treaty of Paris of 1763, the Spanish again by 1783 as the American Revolution concluded, and ended up being purchased by the United States in 1821.2 However, Florida had been home to native peoples long before it was claimed by these countries; archaeological evidence has placed the Paleo- Indian stage of Florida around 12,000 to 7500 BCE and the farming Apalachee Indians were concentrated in present day Leon and Jefferson counties from at least A.D. 1000.3 When William Bartram traveled through the area in the 1770s that is now Northwest Florida, the Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole Indians inhabited the land. He described it as a natural land divided by many lakes, ponds, swamps, and rivers, offering hidden places for retreat and dwellings and abundant with wildlife.4 It was a beautiful and grand description that perhaps was enough to lure American settlers, many from the Southern states, to pack up their families, livelihoods, and every ounce of pioneering spirit in themselves to come to experience a version of Juan Ponce de Leon’s “La Florida” (or “Land of Flowers”). However, I realize it was more than just an experience to uproot oneself and/or one’s family; it was usually a risk, sometimes an adventure, and a decision that could mean a bountiful
1 Enterprise Florida. “Northwest Florida.” http://www.eflorida.com/FloridasRegionsSubpage.aspx?id=242. Accessed July 29, 2011. 2 Florida Center for Instructional Technology, College of Education, University of South Florida. “Florida History 1763-1821: Transfer of Florida.” Exploring Florida: A Social Studies Resource for Students and Teachers (2004). http://fcit.usf.edu/florida/lessons/trnsfer/trnsfer1.pdf. Accessed January 13, 2013. 3 Archaeological Consultants, Inc. “Cultural Resource Assessment Survey for SR 289 (Ninth Ave.), Project Development and Environment Study From Underwood Avenue to Creighton Road, Escambia County, Florida” (prepared for Baskerville-Donovan, Inc. and the Florida Department of Transportation, April 2012); Florida Center for Instructional Technology, College of Education, University of South Florida Exploring Florida: A Social Studies for Instructional Technology, College of Education, University of South Florida. “The Apalachee of Northwest Florida.” Exploring Florida: A Social Studies Resource for Students and Teachers (2004). http://fcit.usf.edu/florida/lessons/apalach/apalach1.pdf. Accessed January 13, 2013. 4 William Bartram, The Travels of William Bartram, Francis Harper’s Naturalist Edition, ed. Francis Harper (Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1998), 134. 3
opportunity for beginning a new life or a detrimental loss from which could never be recovered. Being a sixth generation Holmes Countian, I have often wondered what it felt like for my great- great-grandparents, James and Evalina Taylor, to move their family from Georgia to this unsettled area in the 1840s. Thus, my focus turned to the role of the land for the individual and generally isolated pioneer. Historians such as Edward E. Baptist and Joan E. Cashin have studied individual and family network migrations in the South, but tended to focus on the wealthy planter class.5 While this is interesting and these families were certainly influential in territorial politics and land use, I wanted to further investigate the lesser known and smaller farming families in the more remote counties in Northwest Florida, such as Abraham Faircloth’s migration from Thomas County, Georgia to Holmes County, Florida.6 It seemed from the time the territorial legislature could scramble to assemble, major players were looking to tame the Florida wilderness either through “internal improvements” such as roads and canals or real estate ventures and railroads.7 Settlers and politicians alike adhered to the national frenzy of Indian Removal to ease fears and make “better” use of lands they occupied. Again, I looked for the individual settler’s view and relation to the natives through researching muster rolls for Florida militia during the Second Seminole War (1835-1842) and the diary of a frontiersman. The isolation likely contributed to their fear of the Indians, coinciding with rumors of killings on remote homesteads in contrast to the wealthy “Nucleus,” a group of men in Middle Florida, who were more concerned about selling land and plantation agriculture, as explained by Canter Brown, Jr. in “The Florida Crisis of 1826-27.”8 In this study, I also wanted to know how much acreage was in farmland in the Panhandle and what crops were being grown in order to verify that the number of farms had declined from the time of settlement to today. Research articles provide details of a manufacturing movement, especially related to cotton, that was present leading up to the Civil War and backed by newspaper editors in support of Southern independence. During the war, homesteads were
5 Edward E. Baptist, “The Migration of Planters to Antebellum Florida: Kinship and Power,” The Journal of Southern History 62, no. 3 (Aug., 1996): 527-554. 6 Anna Paget Wells, Heart and History of Holmes County (Dothan, Alabama: New Hope Press, 1999), 2, 22-3. 7 Herbert J. Doherty, Jr., “Ante-Bellum Pensacola: 1821-1860,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 37, no. ¾ Quadricentennial Issue (Jan. – Apr., 1959): 342-3. 8 Canter Brown, Jr., “The Florida Crisis of 1826-1827 and the Second Seminole War,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 73, no. 4 (Apr., 1995): 424-5. 4
tended by women, children, and slaves left back home while men were off fighting in the war.9 After the war, the timber industry greatly expanded as cotton declined, and interest in the railroads was reborn to transport the timber. I also found that many towns emerged along railroad lines, allowing rural folks to move away and easily come back and visit family as well as afford different types of occupations other than farming.10 Company towns also assisted with this transition as farming families left behind the uncertainty of subsistence farming in exchange for the security of wages at the mill to be spent at the company store.11 In addition, I discovered the land was marketed beginning in the 1880s for health and tourism as well as agriculture through flyers and other primary sources, which I include as figures in Chapter Three. Essentially, all of this contributed to the changing of the land’s use in Northwest Florida and life for frontier settlers (at least for some) had expanded beyond an agricultural living well into the twentieth century. Following World War II, the phenomenon of suburbanization changed the rural landscape across the country. According to sociologist T. Stanton Dietrich, the number of farms declined and rural non-farm percentages increased as workers commuted to the urban centers for work and the “organization man” was born. In researching census data, Northwest Florida followed this pattern and a personal interview reveals that many rural residents who had been raised on farms as children looked elsewhere for work as they reached adulthood in the 1960s and 1970s. 12 The entire state had experienced significant change, too, and Florida began to noticeably divide into separate regions as early as the post-Reconstruction years as Central and South Florida became more developed. With the arrival of Henry Flagler’s railroads and wealthy Northern tourists, an arrogance emerged to make the land a “better” place for their enjoyment while looking down upon locals and natives.13 This caused an explosion in population and I felt it was prudent throughout this work to show the variances in numbers of residents between
9 Tracy J. Revels, “Grander in Her Daughters: Florida’s Women During the Civil War,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 77, no. 3 (Winter 1999): 267, 271. 10 Barbara Agresti, “Town and Country in a Florida Rural County in the Late 19th Century: Some Population and Household Comparisons,” Rural Sociology 42, no. 4 (Winter 1977): 556-568. 11 Jeffrey A. Drobney, “Company Towns and Social Transformation in the North Florida Timber Industry, 1880- 1930,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 75, no. 2 (Fall, 1996): 132, 141-4. 12 T. Stanton Dietrich, “Nature and Directions of Suburbanization in the South,” Social Forces 39, no. 2 (Dec., 1960): 181-6; University of Virginia Library, Geospatial and Statistical Data Center, Historical Census Browser, “Florida: Total Acres Land in Farms 1900-1950,” http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/index.html (accessed July 29, 2011). 13 Mark Derr, Some Kind of Paradise: A Chronicle of Man and the Land in Florida (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), 37, 66, 98, 21. 5
Central and South Florida counties and Northwest counties. While population was concentrated in Middle Florida prior to the Civil War, this began to shift somewhere between the 1870s and 1890s as wealthy men made the east coast and central and southern portions more accessible. The population shifted further still after another land boom ensued in the 1920s, and again after Disney World arrived in the late 1960s and into the twenty-first century.14 Obviously, more population and development meant a changing of the land use in the peninsula. Upon traveling to other regions in the United States, it is not uncommon in meeting new people that my Southern accent will beg the question of my state of residence. In answering “Florida,” I sometimes get a strange look and the response, “I thought you were from Texas (or Alabama or Georgia).” However, most often people are enchanted with my home state, and in my mind, they are likely picturing the beach or Disney World or Miami (and dreams of rest or play or both). What many who live outside of the state do not know is that Florida is very distinct in different regions and I continued my approach with the intention to explicitly make comparisons between Northwest and Central and South Florida’s environment, population growth, development, industries, and culture. It seemed that material acknowledging and detailing major differences between the state’s regions was minimal; Mark Derr references the Panhandle in a few instances throughout his book, Some Kind of Paradise: A Chronicle of Man and the Land in Florida, and Steven Mizrach wrote an entire article about it, but he makes many generalizations and divides the state into simply North and South sections when there are actually more regions that could be defined (such as Northwest, Northeast, etc.) and more details to be found in remote areas of each region.15 In a return to the analysis of the marketing of the land, it was evident that tourism had affected both regions of Florida. On a smaller-scale, the tourism of the Panhandle picked up momentum between the 1930s and 1960s and centered around the Gulf Coast’s beaches with affordable accommodations and what some deemed kitschy attractions. According to Tim Hollis’ book, Florida’s Miracle Strip: From Redneck Riviera to Emerald Coast, this worked in favor of the Dixie tourist of the local region and the South as it was less expensive than other
14 Population figures from census data are discussed in more detail in the body of this work. 15 Derr, Some Kind of Paradise; Steven Mizrach, “The North in the South: Southern Florida as a Northern Colony,” Southern Quarterly 42, no. 1 (Fall 2003): 11-21. 6
locales and within a day’s drive, lending it the moniker, “Redneck Riviera.”16 The peninsula had experienced some tourism with places like Silver Springs’ glass bottom boats and Weeki Wachee Springs’ underwater shows, but this paled in comparison to how Walt Disney and his theme park of 27,400 acres in Orange and Osceola counties changed the region when it opened in 1971. During the late 1990s, it was estimated that sixty percent of the 44 million visitors to the state had experienced some part of Disney’s Magic Kingdom.17 Thus, the connection between tourism and development became something to be investigated further. In 2000, high-end and skyward condominiums along the coastline in Panama City Beach replaced the family-owned motels to cater to a more affluent tourist.18 Companies such as the St. Joe Company (the second largest landowner in the state) moved into the real estate and development industry as the twenty-first century arrived and marketed their vast natural holdings in coastal areas like Walton, Bay, Gulf, and Franklin counties, a concept of New Ruralism, based on New Urbanism’s communities with a twist of nature’s surroundings included. Their target audience was wealthy and retired baby-boomers, looking for a second home or relocation, from outside of the local market.19 Was this because local residents had median average incomes that would likely prohibit such a purchase? Several of the development companies have taken large tracts of land in the rural areas and marketed it as “country living,” while locals who have lived in these areas for generations could never afford the lots and homes of these new developments.20 This also led to my desire to include land prices as a focal point throughout the study. Dorothy Dodd reveals early prices in a real estate venture in Pensacola in 1835 and later Homer Vanderblue details the astonishment of someone reporting on extreme land prices miles outside of Miami during the land boom of the 1920s, which he compares to the booms of Chicago in the
16 Tim Hollis, Florida’s Miracle Strip: From Redneck Riviera to Emerald Coast (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004). 17 Florida Memory, “Roadside Attractions in Florida: Tourism and Spectacle Before Disney,” Photo Exhibits, Springs, Rivers, and Fountains, http://www.floridamemory.com/photographiccollection/photo_exhibits/roadside- attractions/attractions2.php (accessed November 20, 2012); Derr, Some Kind of Paradise, 376-8, 383-4. 18 Hollis, Florida’s Miracle Strip, 58-60. 19 Abby Goodnough, “In Florida, a Big Developer Is Counting on Rural Chic,” The New York Times, August 22, 2005, Late edition, Section A, Column 1, National Desk, 11, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/22/national/22land.html?_r=0 (accessed December 9, 2011). 20 See the Russian-based Itera Group’s website for more information about the Archer Group, an Itera company, buying timberlands in U.S. Southern states for “quality country housing” at http://www.iteragroup.com/isp/eng/index/smi/470/13 (last accessed March 8, 2013). 7
1830s and California in the 1880s.21 Walt Disney bought the thousands of acres for his theme park at $180/acre in 1965 and after the news was released in the media, adjacent property was listed at $80,000/acre. During the 2005-2008 real estate boom, land and homes that were once affordable skyrocketed as record-setting prices made it difficult if not impossible for young locals to buy and stay in the area. To divert from the monetary value of the land, I wanted to convey the importance of Northwest Florida’s land through other characteristics such as environmental and historic resources. The region, along with neighboring Alabama and Georgia, is recognized nationally as one of six unique areas that is home to diverse and rare species. Natural resources like the largest remaining longleaf pine forest on the planet, located along the Florida/Georgia border, and species like the Panama City Crayfish (found only in a fifty square-mile range) make the region stand out ecologically and deserve protection.22 Historic resources like the William Keith Cabin in Holmes County and the Shipes-Holley House in Washington County represent nineteenth century frontier architecture and have been preserved and recognized, but there are also structures that may have community historic value, but not meet the criteria to be placed on a registry.23 In addition, each rural community and small town also has a unique character and spirit that pieces together the region’s history. The agrarian heritage seems especially important as farming is still present but part-time farming supplemented by other employment is a common occurrence. All of these characteristics celebrate the rural life and support the quality of life that the region affords its residents. I again compared the state’s regions for lessons that could be learned about development in the peninsula and used one of the most well-publicized atrocities against Florida’s environment, the draining of the Everglades. For a personal story, Bill Bellville serves up quite a moving account in Losing It All to Sprawl: How Progress Ate My Cracker Landscape,
21 Dorothy Dodd, “The New City of Pensacola: A Real Estate Development of 1835-1837,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 9, no. 4 (Apr., 1931): 224-241; Homer B. Vanderblue, “The Florida Land Boom,” The Journal of Land and Public Utility Economics 3, no. 2 (May, 1927): 114, 116-8, 120-1, 123. 22 1000 Friends of Florida, “Saving Special Places: A Citizen’s Guide to Protecting Natural Resources in Florida’s Panhandle,” (2004): 3, http://www.1000friendsofflorida.org/saving-special-places/florida-panhandle/ (accessed December 21, 2012). 23 Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources, “Historical Markers,” http://www.flheritage.com/preservation/markers/list.cfm (accessed September 11, 2009). 8
in which he begrudgingly conceded to the pressure of developers when strip malls and subdivisions encroached upon the quaint community in Sanford that he had come to love.24 Since the 1970s, residents of the Panhandle watched with curiosity and fear as the southern portion of the state’s population exploded, land prices soared, roadways became congested, and the natural environment suffered as a smattering of people and cultures so different from their own descended upon the area Panhandle Floridians call “down South.” Naturally, the availability of land and space further north tempted those looking to escape the crowded life and as the twenty-first century arrived developers and realtors courted the demand zealously and worked to remove the negative “Redneck” image, often without sincere regard for the region’s quality of life that exists because of its unique natural features, historic resources, and rural character. Rural residents in other parts of the South have faced similar “progress.” Rob Amberg’s interviews of residents in and around Madison County, North Carolina, in late 2000, poignantly capture community perspective as an Interstate Connector was being constructed in the region around Asheville. Some residents worried about the character of the tight-knit, small communities and how the highway might separate them. Others welcomed the accessibility to the outside world, but many with generational connections to the land reminisced about their quality of life and homes.25 The slowing economy, though dismal, has provided enough of a pause in development for Northwest Floridians to take a breath. The region currently faces similar problems of the past in searching for a balance of land use and a better economy while maintaining its rural character and quality of life. Finally, a plan of action for the people of the Panhandle seems imperative to conclude this work and a toolbox is provided which includes growth management, rural conservation techniques, land use planning, downtown revitalization, and historic preservation from advocacy groups such as 1000 Friends of Florida who has published resourceful documents, such as “Saving Special Places: A Citizen’s Guide to Protecting Natural Resources in Florida’s Panhandle.”26 The residents of Northwest Florida must realize that these solutions are possible and action can and should be taken to save this special place they call home.
24 Bill Bellville, Losing It All to Sprawl: How Progress Ate My Cracker Landscape (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005). 25 These interviews are discussed in detail in Chapter Four and may be accessed from Documenting the American South, Oral Histories of the American South Collection at http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/. 26 1000 Friends of Florida, “Saving Special Places…”. 9
Figure 1-1 Map of Northwest Florida Counties and Cities (Illustration by the author. Note: This map is for informational and reference purposes only as discussed in this work and is not intended to be a complete and accurate rendering.)
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CHAPTER TWO
FARMING, FAMILY, FREEDOM: WHAT THE LAND MEANT TO EARLY AMERICAN SETTLERS
While there is certainly leftover Spanish influence from when Spain owned the vast wilderness that was Florida, the purpose of this study is to focus on American value of the land and thus, this investigation commences when the United States took over ownership of the land as a territory in 1821 and the immediate movement for “internal improvements” began. The two population centers were Pensacola and St. Augustine, at opposite ends of the territory’s boundaries, and it had been decided that these two locations would rotate hosting the Legislative Council. Travel in Florida was naturally difficult as infrastructure was non-existent and when Pensacola played host in June 1822, it took over a month for enough members to arrive to reach a quorum.27 The same scenario came about the following year when the West Florida delegates traveled to St. Augustine. Governor Duval and the Legislative Council decided to appoint a commissioner from each capital to explore a new location, somewhere in the uncharted area between the Chipola and Suwannee Rivers, and Dr. William H. Simmons of St. Augustine and John Lee Williams of Pensacola were chosen. A plan was devised to rendezvous in St. Marks and continue their journey together. Both experienced obstacles as rains had swollen the creeks and washed over trails and supplies ran out before reaching their destination. Williams had a particularly harrowing experience as he traveled along the coastline without a map, battling wind and rain being forced into St. George ’s Channel, and eventually he chose to leave the group and boat behind and proceed on land through the swamps. He survived on crabs and oysters and built a raft of driftwood to traverse the bay. Fortunately, Williams found the crew on the boat and they eventually arrived at St. Marks. Williams’ trip had totaled twenty-five days while Dr. Simmons’ had taken fifteen. They headed north and upon gaining permission from a leery but persuaded Indian chief, Neomathla, they explored the old fields of Tallahassee, choosing the new capital site.28
27 Doherty, Jr., “Ante-Bellum Pensacola: 1821-1860,” 342-3. 28 Alice Whitman, “Transportation in Territorial Florida,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 17, no. 1 (Jul., 1938): 26-9. 11
This central location between the two cities would make governing the large territory easier and more efficient, and the first meeting was held at the new capital on December 21, 1824.29 Travel was still crude through the wilderness and swamps and proved difficult for carts and wagons. Many Indian trails and military expeditions would establish the places of future roads.30 Estimates were made for building a road from Pensacola to St. Augustine and by the next year, Congress appropriated $20,000 in response to the Council’s petitions and the road was completed in 1826. Additional funds were sent for several years and in 1830, funds were included for a road between Pensacola and Blakely, Alabama and $2000 was appropriated for a road between Apalachicola and Marianna, which would be opened in 1838 and go through St. Joseph, head north to Marianna and up into Georgia.31 Similar to the rest of the South, Florida produced staples that were dependent upon moving the goods from the interior to ports where shipments could be made for export and supplies could reach the inland through these same facilities. As early as 1822, Apalachicola was shipping cotton to New York, but it lacked harbor facilities, and Pensacola was isolated from the interior. During Florida’s territorial period, the country was in a type of canal frenzy, and Governor Call thought a good internal improvement would be a cross-Florida canal from the Atlantic to the Gulf. A persuaded but unconvinced Congress funded a survey in 1825 at $20,000, but the engineers reported a canal along the proposed route to be impracticable for either ship or steamboat. Several canal companies were chartered, but nothing was ever completed.32 In addition to roads, the Council had asked Congress for help in building canals and a navy yard in Pensacola, an idea that had been born even before U.S. acquisition of Pensacola Bay. An 1825 act permitted the creation of a naval depot somewhere along Florida’s Gulf Coast and by the end of the year, Pensacola had been chosen. Another “improvement” project that was initiated to supply timber for warship building at the yard involved some experimentation with the land and its soil as some 60,000 live oak trees were grown on a plantation of 225 acres.33 Residents also ventured into the idea of developing this new frontier early in the territory’s history years before Middle Florida, the area around the new capital, would flourish.
29 Doherty, Jr., “Ante-Bellum Pensacola: 1821-1860,” 353; Whitman, “Transportation in Territorial Florida,” 29. 30 Whitman, “Transportation in Territorial Florida,” 31. 31 Doherty, Jr., “Ante-Bellum Pensacola: 1821-1860,” 344; Whitman, “Transportation in Territorial Florida,” 31-2. 32 Whitman, “Transportation in Territorial Florida,” 38-42. 33 Doherty, Jr., “Ante-Bellum Pensacola: 1821-1860,” 349-350. 12
The notion of “internal improvements” had been set forth during the Jacksonian years by way of roads, rail, and waterways. When Florida had officially become a U.S. territory in 1821, land speculation kicked off quickly, and as early as 1824, political figures were toasting to the idea for tapping into Florida’s possible development and returns. In her article “The New City of Pensacola: A Real Estate Development of 1835-1837,” historian Dorothy Dodd explains how a group of prominent citizens in Pensacola promoted the idea of a railroad project to make a connection between the harbor and up into Alabama and Georgia to increase commerce and a land boom followed. Previously, these citizens, who included John A. Cameron, Thomas M. Blount, William H. Chase, and Walter Gregory, had made subtle moves to purchase large and strategically located tracts of land, some on Pensacola Bay and Bayou Texar. Not much stood in the way of their plans as public land was usually easy to purchase and Gregory was the president of the Bank of Pensacola, a position he could use to conduct business discreetly.34 However, the Moreno Grant/Shackleford tract and the Rivas tract posed a bit of a challenge for the project as both had been divided and sold with numerous claimants and counter claims, but it was no match for the men who knew how to get things done. It measured nearly 800 acres in 1817 when the Spanish government granted the tract to Francisco Moreno, who in 1821 sold all but two arpents (the French measurement that equaled nearly an acre) to Antoine Collins for $800 or roughly $1/acre, who two days later made a deal to sell the tract to Nathan Shackleford for $1000. Shackleford then sold 150 arpents to Samuel M. Smyth for $1000 (roughly $7/acre) later that year and divided the rest into lots for sale, some of which he sold to Joseph White in 1823 equaling about ten acres for $1000 ($100/acre). By 1835, White sold these small plots to Gregory for $4000 and the next year Smyth sold the 150 arpent piece to Chase for $2000. Thus, the value of this premium land had increased 400% in fourteen years. It was one of the largest and most important parcels of the planned project as it was to be the end of the rail line and a location for real estate sales. This made it highly sought after by Cameron who conveyed in a letter dated July 1834 to one of the property claimants, Dr. William J. Watson of Marianna, that he was inquiring about the land for “a friend.” 35 Watson expressed that he would like to retain half of this property as he was aware of “a new course of things springing up or
34 Dorothy Dodd, “The New City of Pensacola,” 224-6. 35 Ibid., 225-9. 13
developing themselves around Pensacola.”36 Watson died, however, before the deal was made and Cameron was able to secure the property in 1835 from those handling Watson’s estate.37 While the total for the Shackleford Tract summed $8900, another important parcel, the Rivas tract, would require the speculative group to pay in excess of $38,000. All of these dealings caught the attention of many, including the editor at the Pensacola Gazette. The weekly paper reported in early 1835 that all business and real estate deals were somehow related to the railroad and scoffed at the land values that had risen astronomically in mere months under the headline “A SYMPTOM,” pointing out that these higher property values were making those seeking ownership of the land much more eager to buy than the current owners were willing to sell. With connections to northern financiers through Chase’s military contacts and Gregory’s former residence being in Boston, the group solicited the project to six businessmen who were associated with the United States Bank. Reluctant at first, these men of New York and Philadelphia needed assurance in their investment beyond the fortunes that the railroad might deliver in an undeveloped land, a territory, where bonds would have to be issued for construction.38 To foster the investors’ confidence, the Pensacola Land Company was formed in December 1835 to allow involvement with the real estate affairs of the project. Railroad construction commenced in 1836 along with a survey and plat of the so-named “Plan of the New City of Pensacola with part of the Old City and vicinity in West Florida” by Chase’s brother. This vision of “the New City” with its railroad cars and ships full of gold and cotton was used by the land company to market to potential buyers in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and in the northern states through agents and literature who proclaimed their “respectability, intelligence, and large capital.”39 The marketing was obviously successful as buyers from Northern and Southern port cities as well as Cuba and rumored Europeans showed up for the public land sale just after New Year’s Day in 1837 and it was reported that sales totaled around $580,000. Another sale in May would bring another $34,415 with lower real estate values, possibly in anticipation of the financial crisis that was affecting the country and would initially strangle the
36 Ibid., 229. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid., 229, 231-3. 39 Ibid., 233, 236-7. 14
railroad, banks, and the ‘New City’ later that year.40 Nevertheless, the group had partially succeeded in their mission to develop Pensacola and dividing the land into small pieces for real estate in West Florida had begun. While the railroad venture as a part of the development of “The New City” of Pensacola had failed during the financial crisis in the 1830s, the business-minded men of Florida revived the idea of building railroads as internal improvements in the 1850s. Shortly after the territory became a state in 1845, Floridians appealed to the Legislature for a railroad from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean. At this time, there was only one rail line that was considered successful, however remote, which began in Tallahassee and ran south 23 miles to St. Marks, a port town on the Gulf. In 1850, Governor Thomas Brown, a Whig, beckoned the legislative body for a system of statewide railways as well as an internal improvement board to be comprised of Whig appointees. Soon, the legislature had passed the bill and he was signing the charter for the Florida, Atlantic and Gulf Central Railroad. Plans for the railroad were to extend from some point on the Atlantic Coast to “some suitable point on the Gulf of Mexico in West Florida.”41 Eminent domain rights were also given to the FA&GC with the terms that it would only be invoked when essential to the project and that property owners would be justly reimbursed. When the company could not find enough investors to purchase its stock, the legislature was revisited and changed the terms to promise state lands where the line might need to be constructed, including half of “swamp and overflowed lands.” 42 The railroad business was plagued with a lack of cooperation and competition between the FA&GC and the FRR (Florida Railroad) channeled through various state politicians and into Congress. In 1855, the Internal Improvement Trust Fund (IITF) was created through legislation as “an act to provide for and encourage a liberal system of Internal Improvements in the State.”43 This fund was to have official state oversight and determined routes for new lines, but the terms in the Internal Improvement Act were far from perfect as it placed liability for default on interest by the companies on the state fund. In May, the FA&GC saw more promise in a line from Jacksonville to Lake City and agreed to allow its competitor, the Pensacola and Georgia Railroad (P&G), to commence building in Middle Florida to meet at Lake City. In just three years,
40 Ibid., 237-8, 240-1. 41 Canter Brown, Jr., “The Florida, Atlantic and Gulf Central Railroad, 1851-1868,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 69, no. 4 (Apr., 1991): 411-2, 414. 42 Ibid., 414. 43 Ibid., 415, 417. 15
however, the relationship was strained as the P&G sought plans to build another line through southwest Georgia to Savannah, a competing port with Jacksonville. Feeling jilted, the FA&GC sought restitution through the judicial system to no avail. It proved to matter little since the Civil War seemed to halt all railroad plans, and Florida’s ports were cut off by the Union naval blockade so goods and parts could not reach the lines. As railroad finances withered, the State stepped in for aid, particularly with the P&G. Eventually, the FA&GC would be sold after the State’s refusal to assist and the new buyers leased the line to the P&G.44 However important the internal improvements seemed, many settlers’ were more concerned with what the land could provide them for a living. Under Spanish and British rule in the 1700s, West Florida was not highly regarded for its agricultural possibilities. English sentiments expressed included deeming the land “condemned” in comparison to the “very great tracts” of other British colonies.45 However, American settlers’ existence highly depended upon their ability to farm and make a living from the land, not unlike the majority of the colonists in America who were subsistence farmers who grew or made all of the necessities of homesteading including food, housing, and garments.46
Homesteads, Plantations, and Indians In the next several decades, pioneer families came from Georgia and Alabama to homestead and farm, becoming the early “Crackers,” most of them of Scots-Irish descent.47 Poor pioneers and wealthy, slaveholding planters alike migrated into the territory, some moving as an individual family unit and others moving in large networks of kinship. Historians such as Joan Cashin assert that in the early- to mid-nineteenth century, a trend toward independence from the authority and decision-making of kin drove a generation of young men to uproot their families and pursue the autonomy that the frontier offered. In contrast, historian Jane Turner Censer argues that planters migrated in family groups due to the unknown and fearful elements that the frontier could present to the families and their health.48 One such pioneer, Abraham Faircloth,
44 Ibid., 417, 419, 421-4, 426-8. 45 Jerrell H. Shofner and William Warren Rogers, “Sea Island Cotton in Ante-Bellum Florida,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 40, no. 4 (Apr., 1962): 373. 46 Cameron L. Saffell, “Rural Life,” Dictionary of American History, ed. Stanley I. Kutler, 3, no. 7 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2003), 206-210. 47 Kathryn Ziewitz and June Wiaz, Green Empire: The St. Joe Company and the Remaking of Florida’s Panhandle (Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2004), 25-6. 48 Baptist, “The Migration of Planters to Antebellum Florida: Kinship and Power,” 528. 16
seems to support both of these arguments, but appears to be defined more by the former idea of independence. He moved into Holmes County in 1848 (the year it was created by the Legislature) from Thomas County, Georgia, where he left a 500-acre plantation and 42 slaves. His family is said to have profited from numerous land deals and that Abraham assisted with settlements of three counties in Georgia, and thus, this may explain why he would have seen a new challenge in relocating to the Florida wilderness, bringing along his wife and sister. Two of his brothers soon followed.49 In the counties around the Tallahassee area in what was called “Middle Florida,” planters surrendered the notion of independence and migrated in much larger networks of kinship as Censer argued. This type of migration enabled planters to gain power politically and economically, having strength in numbers of family members, slaves, and land holdings in the counties extending from Jackson to the Suwannee River. Families such as the Branches, Bradfords, and Whitakers were among these planters who emigrated to Middle Florida beginning in 1830. The families hailed from the Old Dominion and had begun to intermarry by the mid- 1700s in Virginia, with the Bradfords tracing roots back to the Plymouth colony. They had settled into North Carolina around 1740, and continued to build a planter empire into the early 1800s as family members held prominent political seats as senator and governor (John Branch) and other government positions.50 Ten years after settling in Florida, the three families together were 68 members strong in Leon County and continued to prosper through the 1840s depression while other planters faltered. Within another decade, they held 875 slaves (or 10.6% of the total slaves reported in Leon County) and produced 12% of Leon County’s cotton.51 This political power allowed the family to be privy to land sales information and gain even more power. As the plantation culture flourished in Middle Florida and road construction opened up the land for more settlement, it was inevitable for conflict to escalate between the native Indians and white settlers, especially within the proximity of the new capital.52 Both enjoyed the untouched beauty of the area’s streams and waterways and the opportunities for hunting, fishing,
49 Wells, Heart and History of Holmes County, 2, 22-3. 50 Baptist, “The Migration of Planters to Antebellum Florida: Kinship and Power,” 528-530. 51 Ibid., 539, 542, 537; University of Virginia Library, Geospatial and Statistical Data Center, Historical Census Browser, “Florida: Total Slaves 1790-1860,” http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/index.html (accessed July 29, 2011). 52 Canter Brown, Jr., “The Florida Crisis…,” 425-6. 17
and making a living from or surviving on the land.53 As early as 1799, evidence of concern existed among the Miccosukee tribes along the Florida-Georgia border and was expressed in a letter printed in a New York newspaper as a Creek representative leader, Methlogy, talked to a former Indian agent with the discussion interpreted and passed along to the editors. The issue of distress was a line being drawn from the Mississippi River to the St. Mary’s to separate the Spanish and American lands and was to cut through several Indian towns. Natives had been told by a Spanish officer that their men would be made into slaves and the land would be taken from them. As a spokesperson sent by the chiefs and “as the voice of a very great majority of the Creek Indians,” Methlogy stated that “they are determined sooner than submit to such treatment to engage in a war against any nation or people and sooner sacrifice their lives to a man than be robbed of their lands, which is their only support.”54 By the time the United States had acquired the Florida territory, there had already been a growing interest in Indian removal as the natives were holding up the settling of the frontier without any property ownership of the valuable land which whites desired for farms and homesteads.55 Especially anxious were the wealthy planters and politicians who were involved in government contracts and land speculation interested in the rich lands that were occupied by Miccosukees and Red Stick Creeks, who had reputations for being aggressive. Florida had already seen conflict in the years before when the Red Sticks fled neighboring Alabama and Georgia during the Creek Civil War of 1812-1814 and they later fought with the Seminoles in battles during the First Seminole War of 1817-1818.56 In 1823, under the Treaty of Moultrie Creek, thousands of natives were displaced from the area around the Apalachicola and Suwannee rivers to a reservation in the southern peninsula with poor agricultural potential and limited access to trade on the Gulf Coast. One of the military surveyors remarked, “In our whole route…I can safely say that I did not see five hundred acres of good land.”57 Though rations were part of the treaty terms, the government did not deliver and hungry natives and blacks
53 E.W. Carswell, Holmesteading: The History of Holmes County, ed. Ray Reynolds, (Bonifay, Florida: Holmes County Public Library, 1986, 2003), 12. 54 Spectator, “Indian Discontent. Statement from a leader of the Miccosukee to James Seagrove. His people are angry that the Florida-Georgia boundary line is being run through Miccosukee territory,” New York, July 10, 1799, from University of Florida Digital Collections, Historic News Accounts of Florida, http://ufdc.ufl.edu.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/UF00002333/00001 (accessed July 29, 2011). 55 Lucius F. Ellsworth and Jane E. Dysart, “West Florida’s Forgotten People: The Creek Indians from 1830 until 1970,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 59, no. 4 (Apr., 1981): 423-5. 56 Canter Brown, Jr., “The Florida Crisis…,” 424-5. 57 Ibid., 421-2. 18
robbed the white settlers, creating turmoil and fear. Governor Duval felt it his duty to investigate the situation and found the conditions on the reservation startling as he expressed a sentiment similar to the previous surveyor that he could not find even three hundred acres of suitable land. This prompted his request to President John Quincy Adams to extend the boundary north near the Alachua swamp. A meeting with an Indian council made up of chiefs turned into a lecture by Duval and a petition by the native leaders asked for an audience with President Adams. Although the meeting in Washington began with Secretary of War James Barbour’s insistence that harbored runaway slaves be returned and the Indians’ emigrate to the west, the chiefs declined and were able to persuade both Adams and Barbour using details of their plight and suffering to allow the Big Swamp to be a part of the reservation “until [it] is wanted.”58 Even after the chiefs returned home to Florida, residents and plantation owners expressed fear about rogue Indians living in the woods, which prompted action again from Governor Duval due to political pressures. He and other leaders decided a display of force was needed and Captain Francis Dade, a well-known aristocratic military man who had already received accolades under Jackson’s command in 1821 at Pensacola, was called to lead the detachment. In November 1826, two men were murdered by a small band of Creeks just north of Tallahassee in Thomas County, Georgia. There was an urgency to sweep the wayward Indians onto the reservation as significant lands were to be auctioned in January 1827. Dade pushed the Indians south by destroying their villages, and an Aucilla River group of Creeks retaliated by killing a man and four children in December. Militia and volunteers were summoned by the governor in Middle and East Florida and by the spring of 1827 things had quieted enough that Dade went back to Pensacola.59 In 1828, Governor Duval wrote that the “drunken, lazy, and worthless” Florida Indians might elude the imminent fate of extermination upon inclusion in the removal program.60 On a national level, President Andrew Jackson, who had for years favored Indian removal and was an instrumental figure in the First Seminole War, encouraged Congress to pass the Indian Removal Act of 1830 that established that tribes would sign treaties to leave their lands in the east and move across the Mississippi River in exchange for lands in the west or stay and become citizens
58 Ibid., 432. 59 Ibid., 422, 430-7. 60 Ellsworth and Dysart, “West Florida’s Forgotten People,” 423. 19
of their respective states.61 In his President’s message to Congress in December 1830, he spoke about how pleased he was that the government had made such progress that had been in the works for thirty years.62 It does appear on a federal level that there was some attempt to provide a payment of annuities to the various tribes in the 22nd Congress as an appropriations act was passed that provided a total of $336,405 from the Treasury for educating tribal youth, etc. It was reported in The Floridian that $5000 was allocated to the Florida Indians with an additional $1000 for education and another $1000 for “the expenses of a gun and blacksmith.”63 Regardless of any “sympathy” for the Indians, common sentiment among settlers was that they wanted the natives moved elsewhere. Politics were bogged down with how to solve the problem and Jackson had succeeded as the Indian Removal policy was passed by Congress.64 The Second Seminole War began in 1835 as Indian hostilities continued in Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. General Thomas Sidney Jesup was appointed by President Jackson to oversee Florida’s military affairs and again to persuade or forcibly remove natives to emigrate west. While he was able to secure some friendly Indians and form militias from them to aid the United States, his forces warred with Indians through 1838. Jesup is well-known for capturing Osceola, a notorious Seminole leader, under a white flag of truce.65 Although much of the fighting occurred in central and southern Florida, citizens of West and Middle Florida experienced trepidation fueled by the war. In addition, settlers reported seeing Creeks escaping removal in Alabama and Georgia making their way through the Panhandle to fight alongside the
61 “Indian Removal Act of 1830,” Statutes at Large, 21st Congress,1st Session, Washington: Little, Brown and Company, No. 148, 411-2, from the Library of Congress, A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi- bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=004/llsl004.db&recNum=458 (accessed July 29, 2011); Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), Resource Bank, “Indian removal 1814-1858,” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2959.html, accessed (July 29, 2011). 62 “President’s Message,” Register of Debates, 21st Congress, 2nd Session, Washington: Gales and Seaton, ix, from the Library of Congress, A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llrd&fileName=010/llrd010.db&recNum=438 (accessed July 29, 2011). 63 The Floridian and Advocate, Tallahassee, Florida: July 03, 1832, Vol. 3, Issue 46, 2, from NewsBank, America’s Historical Newspapers, http://infoweb.newsbank.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/iw- search/we/HistArchive/HistArchive?d_viewref=doc&p_docnum=- 1&p_nbid=V56D58SUMTM2MjE3MTU1NC41MzY2NDE6MToxNDoxNDYuMjAxLjIwOC4yMg&f_docref=v2: 111FBBC959D85D10@EANX-119606B4A7FE4418@2390368- 119606B4C1712400@0&toc=true&p_docref=v2:111FBBC959D85D10@EANX-119606B4A7FE4418@2390368- 119606B4CB2FD0B8@1-119606B5187D2E28@No%20Headline (accessed April 6, 2012). 64 Florida Department of Military Affairs, “The Second Seminole War 1835-1842,” http://dma.myflorida.com/?page_id=421 (accessed July 29, 2011). 65 Florida Memory, “Brief Biography of Thomas Sidney Jesup,” http://www.floridamemory.com/collections/jesup/essay.php (accessed July 29, 2011). 20
Seminoles, which spurred meetings in Escambia, Jackson, and Gadsden counties.66 Settlers continued to fear the natives as evidenced by a diary entry in November 1838 by Daniel H. Wiggins, a millwright and machinist, who had moved to Jefferson County, Florida, from Maryland in search of financial gains and economic promise that the territory had to offer. Wiggins wrote, “…it is true I some times have some apprehensions of danger from the hostile Indians they have from time to time committed within a few miles of this place most shocking cruelties upon individual families murdering [in] the most barbarous manner men women and children but (thank the Lord) we have a prospect for hostilities speedily to come to a close.”67 It is possible that Wiggins was referring to a local plan to address the conflicts with Indians, but it is also likely he was aware of the State’s call for volunteers and militia that occurred in 1835.68 Throughout the war, militia muster rolls show local men reporting to their nearby stations in Walton County, Eucheeanna, Marianna, Quincy, Tallahassee, and Lafayette County.69 On March 6, 1836, a group of more than 45 men mustered at Marianna in Jackson County under the command of Captain Samuel Stephens.70 One of the men, Benjamin Pitts, was a frontiersman born in 1815 in Georgia, married in 1833 in Henry County, Alabama, and lived in Jackson County or what would become Holmes and Washington Counties. Family oral history relays stories of Benjamin and his neighbors frequently clashing with Indians around their homesteads. In one dramatic account, Indians ambushed some of the settlers and the men chased them through a swamp where Benjamin lost a shoe in the mud, but apparently “skinned enough hide off one to make himself another shoe.”71 Historical markers have been placed where blockhouses were built for women, children, and elderly residents to assemble while the men dealt with Indian troubles.72 While it is impossible to prove if the Pitts family story is true, it represents the mentality of settlers and is likely an accurate representation of the struggle on the
66 Ellsworth and Dysart, “West Florida’s Forgotten People,” 424-5. 67 Daniel H. Wiggins, Diaries 1816-1834, 1838-1841, 1862, Diary Entry, November 5, 1838, from Florida Memory, M89-32, www.floridamemory.com/exhibits/floridahighlights/wiggins/page13.php (accessed July 29, 2011). 68 Florida Department of Military Affairs, “The Second Seminole War 1835-1842,” http://dma.myflorida.com/?page_id=421. 69 For a survey of where frontiersmen mustered, please see Florida Militia Muster Rolls, Volumes 1-10, http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00047719/00010/allvolumes. 70 Florida Militia Muster Rolls, Seminole Indian Wars, Volume 10, St. Augustine, Florida, Florida Department of Military Affairs, 198-, from the University of Florida Digital Collection, http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00047719/00010/7j (accessed August 3, 2012). 71 Bonard F. Pitts, “Pitts ‘Ain’t That the Pitts!’,” in The Heritage of Holmes County, Florida (Clanton, Alabama: Heritage Publishing Consultants, Inc., 2006), 500; Beverly Mount-Douds, “Benjamin and Serena Pitts Family,” in The Heritage of Holmes County (Clanton, Alabama: Heritage Publishing Consultants, Inc., 2006), 500-1. 72 Pitts, 500. 21
frontier between natives and settlers. Jefferson County men returned home from fighting the Indians in eastern and southern Florida to a panicked countryside of people, reeling from attacks. One account was given of Captain James Scott, who lived outside of Lloyd, surprising Indians who thought he was away from home. They volleyed shots through his back door and were met with resistance from Captain Scott and another man who shot back, but a family visitor, Mrs. Perrine, was killed in the disturbance. Other incidences included the burglary of a house in Turkey Scratch outside of Monticello while the wife and children slipped out in time to hide in the woods and watched as the house was burned and another home’s inhabitants in nearby Elizabeth Church (Lloyd) were not as fortunate to escape with their lives.73 With passage of the federal Armed Occupation Act of 1842, settlers (head of household or single men over 18) were offered a 160-acre allowance under terms that 5 undeveloped acres would be planted and enclosed and a structure for living quarters be built for habitation within five years. It was thought that this liberal offer would entice those with the ability to arm themselves on the frontier, and thus, become a force of sorts to deal with the natives, particularly the Seminoles, and encourage settlement in Southeast Florida that had been passed over in previous emigration waves. However, some of these men were able to skirt the terms and stay just long enough for planting and harvesting seasons and others were frightened by even a rumor of Indian uprisings. From 1842-1845, nearly 1300 homesteaders flocked to claim every piece of Florida that could be named as their own.74 During the Florida Indian Wars, muster rolls show varying birthplaces from both northern and southern states.75 Some of the Indians had escaped removal and were spotted living in small bands along the rivers and swamps and hiding in the woodlands away from white settlers from Blackwater Bay (Santa Rosa County) to Holmes Valley (Washington County) to south of Leon County. Muster rolls list men showing up for duty well into the 1850s. While many Indians either relocated to the west in Oklahoma or agreed to live on reservations in Florida, some Indians as individuals and families assimilated into a white lifestyle and culture, unbeknownst to their white neighbors.76
73 Samuel Pasco, “Jefferson County, Florida, 1827-1910,” Florida Historical Quarterly 7, no. 3 (Jan., 1929): 242-4. 74 Derr, Some Kind of Paradise, 274; Joe Knetsch and Paul S. George, “A Problematic Law: The Armed Occupation Act of 1842 and Its Impact on Southeast Florida,” Tequesta: The Journal of the Historical Association of Southern Florida, no. 53 (1993): 64, 70-3, http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00101446/00053/63 (accessed April 6, 2012); James W. Covington, “The Armed Occupation Act of 1842,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 40, no. 1 (Jul., 1961): 41. 75 Florida Militia Muster Rolls, Volumes 1-10, http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00047719/00010/allvolumes. 76 Ellsworth and Dysart, “West Florida’s Forgotten People,” 425, 422-3, 427. 22
While many settlers on the frontier coexisted with the natives, they continued with their intentions and necessity of making a living from the land. Some historians specializing in the antebellum economy question just how self-sufficient southern farms and plantations really were because of documented food importation, but other researchers feel that those of the rural South were certainly self-reliant.77 The United States Census of 1850 shows 266,760 acres of farmland categorized as “improved” and 955,139 acres of “unimproved” in the thirteen counties that existed in West and Middle Florida, which was 76% of the state’s entire totals for both categories of farmland.78 While over one hundred different professions, occupations, and trades are listed for the total male population for Florida, farmers and laborers account for 43% and 19%, respectively, and are based upon the statements given by residents to census takers.79 Crops and produce recorded include wheat, rye, Indian corn, oats, rice, tobacco, ginned cotton, wool, peas and beans, Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, butter, cheese, hay, cane sugar, molasses, and beeswax and honey. The plantation belt counties of Gadsden, Leon, Jefferson, and Madison held the leading numbers in nearly every produce category except for most notably rice and cane sugar. Items of interest include Santa Rosa being the only county statewide to report a yield of buckwheat and flax as well as Leon County being the lone producers of ten gallons of wine and fourteen pounds of hops, which might lend the question of whether the residents had ambitions of selling alcohol. In addition, livestock was reported in the form of horses, mules, milk cows, oxen, cattle, sheep, and swine where the Middle Florida counties held many of the highest numbers.80 Another noteworthy crop for the state not detailed in census data was Sea Island cotton, a long staple type with a black seed that did not cling to the fiber and was easier to clean than the short stapled upland cotton that contained a green seed and held close to the fiber. Its higher quality made it more popular and a higher price was fetched at the markets, but records are limited due to the secrecy of its dealings.81 It was an important crop in Florida economically and
77 Lynn Willoughby, “Apalachicola Aweigh: Shipping and Seamen at Florida’s Premier Cotton Port,” Florida Historical Quarterly 69, no. 2 (Oct., 1990): 189. 78 United States Department of Agriculture, “The Seventh Census of the United States: 1850, Florida,” 407, http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/Historical_Publications/1850/1850a-16.pdf (accessed July 29, 2011). 79 Ibid., 406. 80 Ibid., 407-9. It should be noted that Madison County is just outside of the study area of what is considered Northwest Florida. 81 Shofner and Rogers, “Sea Island Cotton in Ante-Bellum Florida,” 373-4, 379, 375; Baptist, “The Migration of Planters to Antebellum Florida: Kinship and Power,” 537. 23
displays evidence of the coastal lands being valuable as the climate conditions and gulf breezes provided the most favorable conditions for its production. It was also responsible for bringing technological advancement into the state as the “McCarthy Gin” was widely used in the 1840s, being patented by Fones McCarthy in Alabama before he relocated to Putnam County. Other Floridians attempted to tweak their own versions of the Sea Island cotton gin with one example being a patent granted to a Wakulla County man in 1855. By the end of the decade, Florida took the reins from Georgia and South Carolina as top producer of the long staple cotton.82 As was common in the South, cotton was certainly a significant crop that was grown in Florida and is responsible for the dynamic growth that Apalachicola experienced in the 1840s. During this time, it was touted as the most active port in Florida and had the advantage of being at the southern end of the Chattahoochee/Apalachicola, Flint, and Chipola rivers, which provided easy access from the fields in Georgia and Florida. Apalachicola held close ties with New York as approximately 60% of the ships that arrived were from the Northern city and received a quarter of Apalachicola’s cotton exports during the 1840s and 1850s. In addition, Apalachicola exported its products to other Northern ports such as Boston (which received about 1/5 of Apalachicola’s cotton); Baltimore; Providence, Rhode Island; Portsmouth, Massachusetts; and Portland, Maine. Although New York did not have a dedicated textile industry, shipments were routed through here to the numerous mills in New England and Europe. Thus, the two ports were very dependent upon each other when it came to cotton.83
“From the Fields to the Factories” and the Movement Toward Southern Independence While most planters and farmers focused on what was being grown in the fields, other men looked to the region’s potential for manufacturing. One successful industry was the business of lumber mills due to the vast timberlands that were present, especially in West Florida and Pensacola. Situated on the bay and near the Gulf of Mexico, Pensacola did not thrive as a cotton port, but excelled in exporting lumber as the land and woods in the area were filled with virgin timbers of yellow pine, cypress, white oak, and cedar. Advocated by the editor of the Pensacola Gazette, a couple dozen mills were in operation by 1834.84 Merely a decade earlier,
82 Shofner and Rogers, “Sea Island Cotton in Ante-Bellum Florida,” 379, 375, 377, 373. 83 Willoughby, “Apalachicola Aweigh,” 178, 185, 179, 187, 184. 84 John A. Eisterhold, “Lumber and Trade in Pensacola and West Florida: 1800-1860,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 51, no. 3 (Jan., 1973): 267. 24
the federal government had experimented with reserving live oak stands on Santa Rosa Island for naval use.85 Among some of the most successful mills was the Arcadia mill, began by Joseph Forsyth, a Connecticut native who moved to Pensacola in the 1820s. By 1830, he had persuaded the Simpson family to partner with him to form the Arcadia mill on his Pond Creek tract site.86 Lumber products where shipped to the northern ports of Baltimore, New York, and Boston and many of the skilled workers were from the North, in contrast to the usual practice of using slave and free black labor.87 Bagdad was another mill site begun by Forsyth at the convergence of Pond Creek and the Blackwater River. Owners and workers formed the mill town, built homes, and by 1849, it held the title of the largest sawmill around.88 There was also a movement spreading out from Florida’s northern neighbors in Georgia and North Carolina to look at the possibilities for manufacturing in the region by means of cotton mills. As early as 1827, there was published encouragement from entrepreneurs that called for Southern cotton planters to start up cotton mills. The South had for years shipped cotton to New England and Europe that later was sold back in the form of clothing and through questioning this system a show of loyalty to the South blossomed. The Pensacola Gazette editor passionately proclaimed, “The time is fast coming when the slumbering South will be awakened to the unwelcome truth, that she must manufacture her own clothes and raise her own provisions, or her people must become the bond slaves of the north and west.”89 In 1835, Forsyth along with a group of four other Pensacola men received a charter to begin the Escambia Manufacturing Company cotton mill at Arcadia in addition to the already established sawmill. Local interest was sluggish, but in 1842 a new tariff passed by Congress and a drop in cotton prices got the attention of farmers who were staring at a continuous surplus of cotton and by the fall of 1845 there were enough investors to make the project a reality by the next spring.90 When Forsyth focused on the lumber mill at Bagdad, it left the complex at Arcadia open to the opportunity of the cotton mill. Operation was in full swing by April 1846
85 Jerrell H. Shofner, “Negro Laborers and the Forest Industries in Reconstruction Florida,” Journal of Forest History 19, no. 4 (Oct., 1975): 182. 86 Brian Rucker, “Arcadia and Bagdad: Industrial Parks of Antebellum Florida,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 67, no. 2 (Oct., 1988), 149-150. 87 Eisterhold, “Lumber and Trade in Pensacola and West Florida: 1800-1860,” 270, 274; Rucker, “Arcadia and Bagdad,” 156. 88 Rucker, “Arcadia and Bagdad,” 159. 89 Richard W. Griffin, “The Cotton Mill Campaign in Florida, 1828-1863,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 40, no. 3 (Jan., 1962), 261-3. 90 Ibid., 263-4. 25
and slave labor was employed.91 Again the editor called on Southerners to take notice and action as he wrote, “the South would…be independent of Northern capital; we should have everything within ourselves, and a fair division of labor would make us prosperous and happy.”92 Not every Floridian was favorable to this vigorous approach to the self-sufficiency of the South. The editor of the Tallahassee-based Southern Journal expressed his suspicions that the manufacturing campaign was somehow a plot of Northern conspiracy to win over opponents of the tariffs imposed on the South and that the use of slave labor in the mills would put to rest the long held notion that slaves were unable to comprehend higher training. He worried that the “cry of ‘Southern Independence’ ” was “to seduce our farmers from the fields to the factories.”93 The Arcadia factory proved successful as did the use of slave labor. The state legislature passed a tax exemption law for manufacturing stock in the 1847-1848 session and this, along with the Wilmot Proviso, pushed an interest in a cotton mill in Tallahassee. John G. Gamble championed this with a letter to a local paper and although there was sufficient interest, it was short lived when cotton prices rebounded and the cultivation of cotton once more took precedence over its manufacture. Another mill was built in Madison in 1851, providing jobs to local poor white families, and was in operation until it burned in 1857. Suffering from expired insurance, the mill was not rebuilt and the local economy suffered. The last cotton mill operating in Florida prior to the Civil War was the Jefferson Cotton Factory begun by the Southern Rights Manufacturing Association. The intent of the group was to sell clothing to local planters for their slaves, but without sufficient local support, much of their product was ironically shipped north to be sold in New York.94 While the cotton mill campaign was short lived in Florida, it displayed the growing sentiment of the time toward Southern independence and a desire for the South to enjoy the manufacturing success that the North had prospered from for years.
91 Rucker, “Arcadia and Bagdad,” 157-8. 92 Griffin, “The Cotton Mill Campaign in Florida, 1828-1863,” 264. 93 Ibid., 265-6. 94 Ibid., 269-272. 26
CHAPTER THREE
TREES, TRACKS, AND TOURISM: THE CHANGING OF THE LAND POST-CIVIL WAR
As the country was divided during the Civil War, so was the State of Florida. Confederate loyalists were located primarily in Middle Florida where the large plantations existed and Unionist sentiment could be found in areas in West Florida, Jacksonville, and St. Augustine. While much effort was put toward support of the war without regards to either side, agriculture was still a part of each homestead’s existence. On farms and plantations, men generally were away for extended periods in service while women, children, and slaves (if present) handled the domestic affairs. Prices for goods had risen substantially and women were forced to manage their households as best as they could. A Jackson County woman, Amanda Comerford, was left by her husband with a year of supplies to sustain their family of four young children and the twins she was expecting. She wrote, “It is difficult to describe my struggles to provide food and clothing for this large family…I had to work on the farm during the day, go a long distance to milk, and a large part of the night was spent spinning and weaving to make cloth for wearing apparel. But somehow I managed to struggle through as did many other women during these trying times.”95 Another woman, Mattie English Branch, of Liberty County, detailed how the community worked together and shared crops of potatoes, corn, peas, rice, and pumpkins.96 Crops and fruits were also grown that were sent to the troops in addition to pork and fish, which created a need for salt. Plants such as those at St. Andrews and Apalachee Bay separated salt from ocean water that could be used by soldiers to keep the meat from spoiling.97 While the cattle industry would later play a more important role in Central and South Florida, it was present in the Panhandle even before the Civil War. Spanish colonists wanted to continue their heritage of raising cattle and established grazing livestock regions in what is now Tallahassee, Gainesville, St. Augustine, and down the St. Johns River to supply meat to Spanish forces in the latter part of the 1600s. As more settlers began moving into Florida by the early
95 Tracy J. Revels, “Grander in Her Daughters: Florida’s Women During the Civil War,” 267, 271. 96 Ibid., 271. 97 Florida Center for Instructional Technology, College of Education, University of South Florida, “Florida’s Role in the Civil War: Supplier to the Confederacy,” Exploring Florida: A Social Studies Resource for Students and Teachers (2004), http://fcit.usf.edu/florida/lessons/cvl_war/cvl_war1.pdf (accessed January 13, 2013). 27
1800s, cattle supplemented a way to make a living, as they were grown in Florida and trailed to neighboring Georgia and Alabama as well as Tampa and shipped to Cuba in exchange for gold. Evidence exists of another route from the current location of Disney’s Epcot Center to Ft. Myers and by 1840 tens of thousands of cattle were being transported by sea. The Civil War brought a new opportunity for raising cattle as the South needed beef for Confederate troops and were trailed from Florida. However, as the Confederacy ended payments in gold, those raising cattle in Florida looked to sell to Cuba. As the supply in other Southern states waned, Floridians were relieved of their cattle and food and paid in Confederate notes. One early twentieth century historian noted that “herds of cattle and cribs of corn in the valley of the Chattahoochee made that area a valuable source of food.”98 By the last year of the war, cattle rustling had become an issue in the state. Livestock was smuggled down the Suwannee River near Tallahassee and even into the 1890s shotgun patrols rode the woods by horseback in Wakulla County. The effects of the war would be felt for at least another thirty years before efforts were taken to improve the cattle industry in Florida.99 The cotton mills in Jefferson County supplied Confederate soldiers with clothing during the war.100 One of the owners of the Bagdad lumber mill represented Santa Rosa County in 1861 at the Florida Secession Convention and fighting between Union and Confederate forces occurred in the last 4 years of the war at both Bagdad and Arcadia. Bagdad was sacrificially burned by the Confederacy as it was thought to be too valuable to allow for the possibility of it falling into Northern hands.101 After slaves were emancipated and the war was over, many mill owners who had invested in slave labor were met with the challenge of a new way of doing business. Some were able to survive losing their workforce and continue through the war years and after.102 Cotton growers attempted to continue plantation operations as it was an economic staple and brought high earnings in 1865. The Homestead Act of 1866 that opened up the opportunity for land (and the extra planted acreage from this fervor) brought black laborers from Georgia and South Carolina to meet the demand for work, but as cotton prices dropped and planters were disgruntled with the free labor system, they started looking at other opportunities
98 Lewis L. Yarlett, “History of the Florida Cattle Industry,” Rangelands 7, no. 5 (Oct., 1985): 205-6. 99 Ibid., 206. 100 Griffin, “The Cotton Mill Campaign in Florida, 1828-1863,” 274. 101 Rucker, “Arcadia and Bagdad,” 162-4. 102 Eisterhold, “Lumber and Trade in Pensacola and West Florida: 1800-1860,” 278. 28
during the Reconstruction years.103 In the Red Hills north of Tallahassee, wealthy Northern families turned large tracts of previously cultivated land into quail hunting plantations. A system of sharecropping and tenant farming emerged all over the South where former slaves and poor whites worked the land and paid rent to the landowners, usually through a portion of the crops grown. This system generally resulted in “an endless cycle of landlessness, debt, and poverty.”104 According to historian Eric Foner, land was considered essential for freedom under the philosophies of Thomas Jefferson, who said “the truly free person is the small farmer, the yeoman farmer” and Abraham Lincoln, who felt that “the person who works for wages his entire life is not truly free.”105 Thus, it was difficult for the Federal Government’s Reconstruction programs to be successful when newly freed slaves could not find the means to become landowners and the South was left in ruins. As cotton production declined and a surplus of black workers needed jobs, the Florida timber industry was revitalized and provided this work throughout the state. By the 1870s, cotton was still grown in Middle Florida, but the ports that once primarily shipped it—Apalachicola, St. Marks, Newport—lost out as it was mostly sent by rail to Savannah. Lumber operations included turpentining as another aspect of these operations, but it was the least desirable work.106 Turpentine has also been referred to as naval stores due to it and its related products being used to seal joints in shipbuilding. This process was usually accomplished two or three years prior to relieving the timber from the land.107 Companies could acquire timber either by the fee simple method of owning the timber and land or by stumpage which provided title of the timber without ownership of the land.108 Because water provided an easy mode for moving lumber, operators tended to look for good stands of timber nearby and shipped workers as far south as Tampa Bay and Charlotte
103 Shofner, “Negro Laborers and the Forest Industries in Reconstruction Florida,” 180, 183. 104 Florida Memory, “Plantation Culture: Land and Labor in Florida History,” Photo Exhibits, King Quail, http://www.floridamemory.com/photographiccollection/photo_exhibits/plantations/plantations4.php (accessed January 13, 2013); Charles C. Bolton, “Farmers Without Land: The Plight of White Tenant Farmers and Sharecroppers,” Mississippi History Now, (March 2004), http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/articles/228/farmers-without- land-the-plight-of-white-tenant-farmers-and-sharecroppers (accessed February 21, 2013). 105 Public Broadcasting Service, “Northerners in the South: Special Features,” Reconstruction: The Second Civil War, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/reconstruction/carpetbagger/sf_building.html (accessed February 21, 2013). 106 Shofner, “Negro Laborers and the Forest Industries in Reconstruction Florida,” 185. 107 Russell Tedder, “Seaboard’s Bainbridge and Richland Subdivisions: Carrabelle, Tallahassee, & Georgia Railroad, Georgia, Florida & Alabama Railway, Georgia, Florida & Alabama Railroad,” Lines South 8, no. 2 (2nd Quarter 2011): 6. 108 Edward F. Keuchel, “Purely A Business Motive German-American Lumber Company 1901-1918,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 52, no. 4 (Apr., 1974): 382. 29
Harbor as well as Lake Monroe in Orange County. Henry S. Sanford began a sawmill on 23,000 acres (on the site of the town that would be named for him) and looked to Sweden and Italy as finding proper workers proved challenging. When he and his partners brought in black labor, racial tensions escalated as white workers were jealous and desired the jobs. Other mills that operated in the state were located at Cedar Key, Jacksonville, Apalachicola, and Madison County. The economy of Pensacola and the surrounding areas was dominated by the lumber industry as it had been before the Civil War. While some laborers worked at the Navy Yard or made bricks, most logged the forests or loaded wood onto ships at the docks. Timber closest in proximity to the Perdido, Blackwater, Yellow, and Choctawhatchee Rivers made it the first to be relieved from the land. A unique method was developed in the Panhandle (said first to be in Santa Rosa County) where loggers used longleaf pine logs to build chutes in ditches near streams that could float cut timber to the mills where the large waterways did not reach. Ditches were generally four feet wide and four feet deep and were controlled by opening a gate that would allow water into the ditches and move logs along. Only mature, quality timber was cut since it needed to float and usually measured 30-35 feet and kept in one piece unless it was too crooked to make the trip.109 Due to the timber industry’s growth and moving other goods such as cotton, interest was renewed in the railroads since a transportation system was needed. As noted earlier, attempts had already been made to establish railroad lines from West Florida to Georgia with limited success. However, moving lumber right from the timber stands allowed lumber men the freedom to get away from the rivers that were necessary for the mills. Many of the lumber owners came from the North where the white pine forests had already been harvested and the Southern lands held stores of beautiful longleaf yellow pines. The rail lines formed a network that also provided a means to move goods back and forth from the South to the industrial North.110 During the 1870s and 1880s, William D. Chipley, a railroad man from Columbus, Georgia, was instrumental in construction of the Pensacola and Atlantic Railroad, a subsidiary of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, which connected the western port city to a point of existing rail just east of the Apalachicola River. Construction began in June 1881 and was completed in less than two years. It was a triumph to make the connection across the river and to the rest of
109 Shofner, “Negro Laborers and the Forest Industries in Reconstruction Florida,” 184-7. 110 Tedder, “Seaboard’s Bainbridge and Richland Subdivisions,” 4; Keuchel, “Purely A Business Motive,” 382. 30
the state as Florida was still very frontier in nature. The only towns along the line in existence at the time were Milton and Marianna. Sawmills and turpentine operations continued to grow because of the availability of the railroad.111 In Middle Florida, the Carrabelle, Tallahassee & Georgia Railroad (CT&G) and the Georgia Florida & Alabama (GF&A) both began out of the needs of the expanding lumber industry. The CT&G connected the fishing village of Carrabelle in Franklin County to Tallahassee in 1893 as the area’s economy had become reliant on the sawmills and what seemed like an infinite amount of timber. Charles M. Harrison had a sawmill around Apalachicola in the Civil War era and James Coombs was a renowned lumber patriarch by the 1870s and many other mill owners had established their facilities around Coombs’ mills at the mouth of the Apalachicola River. The CT&G had come from the consolidation of other railroad companies that had previously received thousands of acres of land grants from the State of Florida to build railroads, some of which never built any rail. Sawmills would be started along a projected route in expectations of cutting the timber and then the line would not be constructed due to lack of capital or other reasons.112 Some investment companies, however, were successful in financing the rail. The Georgia & Florida Investment Company, owned by New Jersey mill owner William Clark, held 170,000 acres along the route that formed the CT&G. Clark owned Clark Thread Mills and used the pine for thread spools. Many of the railroads began in this way as business men saw the potential for moving their product. The Georgia Florida & Alabama line began under the name of the Georgia Pine Railway as Jesse Parker Williams, a Savannah turpentine expert and entrepreneur, wanted a railroad from Bainbridge that would reach north to his timber acreage. It also connected to the Flint River, which had boat lines, Central Georgia, and the Atlantic Coast Line as well as coordinated with the Plant System at Savannah. The name change came in 1901 in order to give the rail a more regional moniker. As the CT&G had always struggled financially and its proposed extension to Thomasville had never been built, Williams worked to buy and merge the foreclosed company into his GF&A by 1906. Since the CT&G traveled through the wet areas and swamplands, it did not take long before the line was referred to as “Gophers, Frogs & Alligators.” An extension was also completed to Quincy to reach the growing industries in the
111 Edward C. Williamson, “William D. Chipley, West Florida’s Mr. Railroad,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 25, no. 4 (Apr., 1947): 333, 335-7. 112 Tedder, “Seaboard’s Bainbridge and Richland Subdivisions,” 4-7. 31 high-quality Sumatra leaf tobacco and fuller’s earth mining deposits, both of which supported the GF&A line financially.113
Figure 3-1 Hyer-Knowles Planing Mill Chimney, Pensacola, Florida (photo by the author)
113 Ibid., 7, 11-13, 15-17. 32
Figure 3-2 Hyer-Knowles informational plaque, Pensacola, Florida (photo by the author)
While population was more concentrated in Northwest Florida and Middle Florida, the area was still scarcely settled after the Civil War. However, the railroads allowed towns to emerge along the lines in part because it made transportation easier. Rural residents could visit other places or move away from family and come back to visit. In the mid-1880s, towns and depots such as Galt City, Lake De Funiak (later Defuniak Springs), Westville, Ponce de Leon, Bonifay, and Chipley (aptly named for the railroad man) sprang up along the rail lines of the P&A.114 Towns on the CT&G that flourished in Middle Florida’s timber and naval stores industries in the late nineteenth century were McIntyre and Sopchoppy; Lanark and Panacea
114 Agresti, “Town and Country,” 557; Williamson, “William D. Chipley,” 339; The Heritage of Holmes County, Florida (Clanton, Alabama: Heritage Publishing Consultants, Inc., 2006), 3; Galt City, Broadside/Advertisement, Pensacola, Florida: c. 1885, from Florida Memory, Florida Broadsides, http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/212410 (accessed September 11, 2009). 33
were health destinations on the line as well.115 Smaller lines that were constructed for sawmills and turpentine operations existed such as one from southeast Alabama to Graceville, Florida (Jackson County) that was the lifeline of the towns of Esto and Noma in northeastern Holmes County.116 Thus, similar to the rest of the rural South, there was a migration from farming and the agrarian way of life that was dominant prior to the Civil War to other occupations such as logging, turpentining, shipbuilding, steamboat operations, etc. in the Postbellum era. A closer look at a study regarding Defuniak Springs and Walton County in 1885 shows that the railroad helped to change the character of a typical rural Panhandle resident with a distinction between townspeople and country folk. A sample of white residents living in town tended to be younger couples, having more diverse occupations such as publisher, hotel manager, druggist, editor, shoemaker, music teacher, and dentist while the county sampling had older families with a significant number of extended kin or multi-generational households, and while the reported occupations were more than just agriculturally related, nearly 80% of the surveyed workforce was categorized as laborer or farmer. In addition, ninety-two percent of the county residents were born in Florida or Alabama with the remaining others being born in southern states with the exception of one Scandinavian. In contrast, the town’s inhabitants show birthplaces of southern states for 92% and the other 7% were from non-southern states and 1% comprised those born in foreign countries.117 Similar to the railroads, the timber industry assisted in the changing of the face of the agrarian South and rural Florida post Reconstruction and the early part of the twentieth century. This is apparent in a study of company towns that were created to meet the demand of timber operations. Historian Jeffrey Drobney argues that men and young boys started this trend as they looked for seasonal work away from the farm and eventually became totally reliant upon the sawmill and logging camps over two to three generations, which resulted in entire families moving from the farms. These towns were located near the timber stands as logistically it was more sensible to ship a finished lumber product than to transport raw logs to a mill. These towns included Bagdad and Century (outlying of Pensacola in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties), Foley (outside of Perry in Taylor County), and Shamrock (south of Foley in Dixie County) and
115 Tedder, “Seaboard’s Bainbridge and Richland Subdivisions,” 9-11. 116 Heritage of Holmes County, Florida, 3. 117 Agresti, “Town and Country,” 556-561. 34
sometimes held thousands of residents. As the company towns and mills were located away from already established towns that had homes, schools, stores, churches, and other facilities, mill owners had to provide these necessities for their workers (all company-controlled). To create a loyal workforce, owners also recruited entire families and encouraged a work and leisure culture.118 Historically, there has been a negative connotation associated with company towns because of their paternalistic nature and control over so many aspects of a worker’s life including the scrip system of the company store that recouped workers’ wages, something which seems to go against the rebellious character of the South and the self-sufficient principles of the Southern farmer. However, Drobney’s research shows a more positive image. Many of the North Florida company town residents were natives of Florida, some from Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina, mostly white and Protestant. Farther south in Shamrock, however, the workforce was comprised of nearly 70% black workers. It seems there was an acceptance that with the company control came a stable way of work and life that was in their best interest that they could not find individually. To accommodate leisure activities, workers were provided a day off on the Sabbath and while they could attend church, many enjoyed hunting, fishing, or relaxing and visiting on front porches that provided the connection to the traditions of the agrarian and rural way of life.119 By contrast, the company store provided goods that allowed women to lose the relationship with older female family members who continued the traditions of making homecrafts, gardening, and canning and preserving homegrown fruits and vegetables. Men, women, and children who formerly worked together on family farms were now separated by a man’s work at the mill and a woman’s work at home. Even in leisure settings and family events sponsored by the company, men and women separated into their respective groups. Thus, while a family in a company town may have held more security, they exchanged their freedom of property and home ownership on the individual family farm and being in charge of one’s own fate, and accepted a lower social position. Nevertheless, many mill workers in Drobney’s study
118 Drobney, “Company Towns,” 121-124. 119 Ibid., 124-8, 132. 35
preferred the “family” of the company town over the isolation, long hours of labor intensive work, lack of medical care, and anxiety of subsistence farming.120 Continuing to thrive well into the twentieth century, the lumber industry along the Gulf Coast supported the ports of Pensacola, Mobile, Gulfport, and New Orleans as the four largest lumber shipping ports in the world for over twenty years. European, Latin American, and African countries took an interest in importing American lumber products. The German- American Lumber Company became known as a leader and household name in the Panhandle and the state for exporting lumber to Europe. The company was started in 1901 by German born Frederick Julius Schreyer, whose family had sent him to the United States to learn about the yellow pine trade. Pensacola was home to the main office and the mill was located in Millville in Bay County on St. Andrews Bay when the company purchased the 1898 mill and 30,000 acres from the St. Andrews Lumber Company.121 In the years that followed, Schreyer worked with other men in the trade and added thousands of acres to his holdings either by fee simple or stumpage. These lands were mostly located in Bay, Calhoun, Washington, and Jackson Counties. The mill burned in 1906 and a new mill built in 1907 that made it the largest mill in the state. It prospered until World War I was declared in 1914 when the exporting of lumber became fairly non-existent on the Gulf Coast. In 1917, the U.S. declared war on Germany and this meant trouble for the German owned company as Congress passed the Trading-with-the-Enemy Act that gave the government the power to seize all foreign property in the country. Schreyer’s American-based business associates were arrested and a New York reporter ran an erroneous article charging that the company, once respected in the lumber business, was simply a façade for an evil plan to take control of Gulf Coast ports. Despite being renamed the American Lumber Company in 1918 and then merged with the Gulf Shipbuilding Company, it still could not survive cancelled contracts and was sold by the Alien Property Custodian’s Office the following year to Walter C. Sherman of Panama City who renamed it the St. Andrew Bay Lumber Company. Sherman had operated a mill in nearby Fountain since 1912 and ran the company until 1930 as much of the timber was gone from the land.122
120 Ibid., 132, 141-4. 121 Keuchel, “Purely A Business Motive,” 381-6. 122 Ibid., 386-8, 391-4. 36
Whereas North Florida had once been home to beautiful landscapes of virgin cypress and pine trees, the lumber industry had taken its toll on the land as reforestation was uncommon and the damage had already been done. By the mid-1930s and early 1940s, the timber industry had declined dramatically. It seems like a lesson should have been learned from the depletion of white pine in the North which pushed Northern businessmen to move into the South for its yellow pine, but the quest for fortune overshadowed any feelings that might have hinted at conservation. An interesting essay appeared in 1931 regarding the South and its destiny for greatness in the timber industry, authored by Joseph Hyde Pratt, Ph.D. In the essay, he discusses the timber supply of the South and how the estimation of acres of forest land had always been approximate and was likely the most accurate that it had been up to that point. He provided an estimate of 19,000,000 acres remaining of 28,800,000 acres of original forest area in the state of Florida. Other Southern states had forests reduced by more than 50%. Pratt stated that “although a large percentage…has been cut over, there still remains a large supply of both hardwoods and softwoods which will, with conservative cutting and cultivation, not only furnish the present wood-using industries…, but will permit of a considerable expansion of many of these industries.”123 While the author did not clearly describe any methods for conservation, he did advocate for less waste of the tree by using it for wood pulp and wood fiber products. Also pointed out was the destruction of the virgin longleaf pine in the Carolinas due to arbitrary turpentine practices, lack of protection from fire, and no existing legal safeguards, all of which were a catalyst for the naval stores production to move further south into Georgia and Florida where the same problems were leading to a similar situation. In place of the longleaf, the slash pine, a faster growing type that once only thrived in wet areas, was predicted (and accurately so) to overtake the land where the longleaf once stood.124 Although the railroads and timber industry had major effects on the land and people of Northwest and Middle Florida, another smaller but influential industry was the marketing of the land itself—for agriculture, health, and tourism. One earlier historian noted that the British were the first to have a public campaign for Florida in 1763 in the form of a proclamation with the
123 Joseph Hyde Pratt, “The Lumber and Forest-Products Industry of the South,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 153, The Coming of Industry to the South (Jan., 1931): 64. Dr. Pratt’s credentials included being the Executive Secretary of the Southern Forestry Congress and Chairman of the Executive Committee, North Carolina Forestry Association at Chapel Hill. 124 Ibid., 70, 74. 37
intention of drawing settlers to its new provinces. This was considered a part of the first land boom in American real estate speculation as land companies were steadily plotting the acquisition and subdivision of large parcels of territory. Land was already running out in the original colonies along the Eastern coast and there were the ever present concerns of clashes between Indians and new settlers.125 Primarily geared toward what was considered East Florida (the more peninsular part of the state south of the St. Mary’s River), Florida was marketed as a splendid locale with a climate similar to that of the West Indies that offered an opportunity to grow semi-tropical produce. It was also compared to the Carolinas for the possibilities of growing cotton and said to have advantages over Georgia for an even longer growing season for indigo and silk. Several writers with British ties boasted of Florida’s prospect of being a great territory, including William Knox, an upcoming statesman, and John Bartram and son, William, renowned botanists, and advertisements were featured in the London Gazette and Scot’s Magazine. Although Gentleman’s Magazine was critical of North America’s southern and nautical areas, it had been favorable of Florida in its January 1763 issue as it said it was “happy in a pure air, and a fruitful soil, equal to any of our colonies, producing excellent timber, dying woods, shrubs, herbs, together with all sorts of grain, and excellent grapes.”126 As noted earlier, there were a few English writers who snubbed Florida in comparison to other British colonies and even during the British publicity campaign, West Florida (land mostly west of the Apalachicola River) was the subject of accounts of a harmful climate.127 Regardless, over a century later, those who were settled in all parts of Florida and those who owned property to sell were still trying to lure new settlers into paradise. An advertisement in 1885 put out by W.G. Chipley, the railroad man from Columbus, Georgia, touted Galt City’s attractiveness using terms like “charming” and “delightful.”128 The entrepreneur marketed the village’s opportunity for agriculture, concentrating on fruits such as the LeConte Pear (comparing its prominence to the Orange) and the Fig, and mentioned shipping opportunities being located near Pensacola as well as on Chipley’s Pensacola & Atlantic Railroad, which obviously benefited him in more than
125 Charles L. Mowat, “The First Campaign of Publicity for Florida,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 30, no. 3 (Dec., 1943): 359-361. 126 Ibid., 368, 363-4, 373. 127 Ibid., 366. 128 Galt City, Broadside/Advertisement, Pensacola, Florida: c. 1885, from Florida Memory, Florida Broadsides, http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/212410 (accessed September 11, 2009). 38
one way. For recreational promotion, the ad praised the waterways and game for the sportsman. The climate and nearby mineral springs were marketed to those looking for good health.129 In 1887, a similar advertisement was distributed for Jefferson County by E. B. Bailey of Monticello describing in length the successes he had experienced and again, the crops that could be grown, the “honesty and hospitality of its people,” and the climate and hotel for health seekers.130 Health and recreation, in fact, were used quite often in attracting visitors to towns in Northwest Florida. Lanark and Panacea were both towns on the Carrabelle, Tallahassee, & Georgia Railroad (later the Georgia, Florida, & Alabama) with hotel resorts and mineral springs that were reputed to have positive medicinal effects and hailed visitors from afar in the late 1890s and early twentieth century. At Lanark, guests could also enjoy the health spa, a swimming pool, gardens, beaches, fine dining, and bath houses as well as boating. Destroyed by a hurricane in 1899 and fire in 1940, the twice rebuilt hotel was taken over during World War II for amphibious training.131 In another newspaper advertisement, Panama City was marketed in the very first issue of the Panama City Pilot in 1907 as the Gulf Coast Development Company hailed it as “the coming ‘Gate-way City’ ” between the South and other countries for the “immense commerce,” touting “healthful location…free factory sites…bathing, hunting and fishing unsurpassed…lots and acres on installment plan,” which clearly indicates the company was trying to attract both investors and new residents.132 A 1915 brochure for Bay County went into great detail in its attempt to invite newcomers, citing the small lakes and large streams long known for its health benefits and offers to the fisherman with a lengthy list of fish species available. Also detailed were stock raising and crops with a mention of the varieties of soil and growing season that lasted all year. It boasted “the best ocean bathing beaches in the world” and that for more than a century it had been “the resort of those suffering from nervousness,
129 Ibid. 130 E. B. Bailey, Florida, Jefferson County, where it is, and what can be done here, Broadside/Advertisement, Monticello, Florida: 1887, from Florida Memory, Florida Broadsides, http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/212461, http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/212462 (accessed September 11, 2009). 131 Tedder, “Seaboard’s Bainbridge and Richland Subdivisions,” 9, 11. 132 Panama City Pilot, “Panama City!” Washington County, Florida: May 30, 1907, from The Library of Congress, Chronicling America, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn88084205/1907-05-30/ed-1/seq-4/ (accessed September 11, 2009). 39
rheumatism, heart and stomach troubles, bronchitis, etc., and invariably these sufferers from these ailments have found relief in this genial climate.”133 While West and Middle Florida were heavily marketed after the Civil War and had been the concentration for Florida’s settlement in its first century of American ownership, the peninsula and South Florida had become a playground for the affluent around the 1890s as Henry Flagler built railroads down the East Coast and became a master of planned development with the establishment of the communities like Palm Beach, West Palm Beach, and Miami. He had made lands accessible that were previously hard to get to, similar to the transportation woes that initially plagued the northern part of the state. South Florida had been an open land for those in the cattle industry, the native Cowboy “Crackers” (a term that painter Frederic Remington coined as an insult to the seemingly uncivilized rogues), as well as citrus growers, but Flagler aimed and succeeded in providing a mecca for the tourists, mostly Northerners, in the form of hotels and resorts.134 This phenomenon occurred in other American landscapes as those who could afford to spend the money and time sought good health in the natural environment outside of the urban centers. In the 1880s, thousands of wealthy sufferers of hay fever flocked to relax in the Adirondacks of upstate New York, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and the Great Lakes during late summer to escape the dust and heat of industrialized cities. This lead to a longer tourist season into the fall and a shaping of those regions as conservation efforts emerged to create public parks and protect those healthful places. Writers such as Helen Hunt Jackson, who enjoyed the benefits of the Colorado Territory, noted the degradation of its natural resources as civilization spread. It is ironic that it was her husband’s railroads and her writings that contributed to so much interest and immigration into the area. Mining created “yellow, suffocating smoke” and she wrote that despite “material success…it [a small mining town] will have lost something when the whistle of the railroad trains and the noisy bustle of many people’s living shall have driven off the antelope and the deer” and warned Coloradans that “the contagion of the haste of the rich is as deadly as the contagion of disease.”135
133 Florida Center for Instructional Technology, College of Education, University of South Florida. “Greeting from Bay County, Florida, 1915.” Exploring Florida: A Social Studies Resource for Students and Teachers (2004), Floripedia, http://fcit.usf.edu/florida/docs/b/baycounty.htm (accessed September 11, 2009). 134 Derr, Some Kind of Paradise, 37, 66, 98. 135 Gregg Mitman, “In Search of Health: Landscape and Disease in American Environmental History,” Environmental History 10, no. 2 (Apr., 2005): 197-9. 40
In addition to an awareness of environmental change, a sense of entitlement and arrogance emerged among the wealthy, who felt that the lower classes usually found living in these rural and pure environments were contaminating it through their lifestyles and did not appreciate nor deserve it and were sometimes purged from the land by those who were believers of eugenics.136 Flagler, however, was not as concerned as providing for those looking for health relief and expressed his sentiments upon his second visit to St. Augustine, saying the San Marco hotel was “filled…not with consumptives, but that class of society one meets at the great watering places of Europe” and that “someone with sufficient means ought to provide accommodations for that class of people who are not sick, but who come here to enjoy the climate and have plenty of money.”137 Flagler, although considered racist, hired the Florida natives and blacks from Florida, Alabama, and Georgia (those he felt were especially inferior) to do his work as well as various groups such as Swedish, Irish, Italian, Greeks, Cubans, and Californians. Henry Sanford, an old Union general turned development entrepreneur, brought in laborers from Sweden, Italy, and Poland as he laid his plans for a community and needed workers to cut timber and farm. Many of these immigrant laborers were successful in citriculture and stayed after their terms with Sanford were satisfied as they were given five-acre groves. As more immigrants arrived, the citrus industry became the marketable product of the region. Henry Plant, another railroad magnate, tourist fanatic, and businessman in Central and South Florida, catered to the thousands of Cubans who had relocated to cities like Key West, Tampa (Ybor City), and Jacksonville in the 1890s as Florida’s tobacco and cigar industries flourished.138
Florida “Develops” and Divides into North and South Even as Florida was still a frontier land by most accounts, it was during the time of post- Reconstruction into the twentieth century that it began to transform and noticeably divide into two distinct regions. The tourists, mostly from the Northern United States, would visit each winter, numbering 25,000 in the 1880s. Some liked it so well that 10,000-15,000 people each year decided on Florida as their new home. Thus, Florida’s population naturally exploded, increasing nearly 50 percent from 188,000 in 1870 to 391,000 in 1890. Studies on settlement
136 Ibid., 200-1. 137 Derr, Some Kind of Paradise, 21. 138 Ibid., 31, 76-8, 102-6. Also, see Gary Mormino and George Pozzetta, The Immigrant World of Ybor City: Italians and Their Latin Neighbors in Tampa, 1885-1985. 41
patterns have indicated that many Northern and Midwestern transplants and the immigrants of the international workforce migrated to the region from St. Augustine to Central and South Florida. Ex-Confederates tended to be found in the Panhandle and Middle Florida old plantation belt as well as the Gulf Coast. As the different groups among varying social statuses and beliefs mixed, it is no surprise that clashes occurred. Florida’s white natives, or “Crackers,” were heavily discriminated against in 1870s marketing campaigns by the state immigration office as they were described by George Barbour as “unadulterated…clay-eating, gaunt, pale…leather- skinned…stupid.”139 Black natives were still valued mostly for their labor, working inside homes or out in the fields, turpentining, construction, or as sharecroppers. Most rural residents could sustain themselves from the land—hunting deer, rabbits, hogs, and fishing as well as gardening.140 An 1898 column in the Chipley Banner, entitled “Common Sense Farming,” instructed its readers that the family and stock were to be taken care of first and to plant crops that could be planted right after one another and were readily marketable.141 It was not always dependable as the weather could be extremely dry or cold and insects could wreak havoc on gardens. Sometimes settlers would overhunt, producing shortages of meat sources. Many of these rural Floridians chose not to work in the newer industries, finding their own ways from the land for cash and barter, and the Crackers were criticized for their attachment to home and kin, a trait that was likely attributed to their Celtic and Scottish ancestry. Social historian W. J. Cash reflected in his 1941 work, Mind of the South, that poor, white Crackers displayed “perhaps the most intense individualism the world has seen since the Italian Renaissance and its men of ‘terrible fury.’ ”142 Flagler had shunned Florida natives at his hotels for years during the 1890s as the rules in the illegal gambling parlors specifically barred their participation and blacks were only admitted if they were servants or laborers. He was even choosy with those he recruited to live and work in his created communities in order to craft a dependable and hardworking society of mostly Northern or Midwestern American or European families, with a Japanese settlement near Boca Raton called Yomato and a Danish farming colony north of Miami named Modello that were
139 Derr, Some Kind of Paradise, 64-6. 140 Ibid., 65-7. 141 The Chipley Banner, “Common Sense Farming,” Chipley, Washington County, Florida: October 15, 1898, from The Library of Congress, Chronicling America, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn95047263/1898-10-15/ed- 1/seq-2/ (accessed September 16, 2011). 142 Derr, Some Kind of Paradise, 67. 42
exceptions. Tourism, the railroads, and developers such as Flagler, Sanford, and Plant, as well as automobiles, contributed to the land boom that arrived in South Florida in the 1920s. While the Southern portion of the state experienced rapid population growth, West Florida was said to have hardly been affected except for some minor land speculation in Pensacola, St. Andrews Bay, and Apalachicola.143 This might have been somewhat disappointing to Florida promoters who had hoped for over 20 years to spread development to the entire state. A turn of the century issue of the Homeseeker, a publication began by Flagler’s Model Land Company as part of a publicity campaign to attract new settlers, boasted, “What a great thing it will be when such monopolies as ours get control of the whole State, opening up the now worthless thousands upon thousands of acres of land, building railroads, towns, paying good wages, taxes, and making things ‘get’ generally.”144 In 1925, the land boom peaked and even into 1926 newspapers were still trying to validate its presence. Millions of dollars’ worth of bonds were sold through the mail to finance improvements in cities such as sidewalks, piers, libraries, hospitals, and other buildings. The frenzy was described by one creditor of Atlanta: Lots are bought from blue-prints. They look better that way. Then the buyer gets the promoter’s vision, can see the splendid curving boulevards, the yacht basin, the parks lined with leaning cocoanut [sic] trees and flaming hibiscus. The salesman can show the expected line of heavy travel and help you select a double (two-lot) corner for business, or a quiet water-front retreat suitable for a winter home. To go see the lot—well, it isn’t done. In fact, often it isn’t practicable, for most of the lots are sold “predevelopment.” The boulevards are yet to be laid, the yacht basin must be pumped out, and the excavated dirt used to raise the proposed lots above water or bog level…And the prices! It takes days to get accustomed to hearing them without experiencing a shock…Inside lots from $8,000 to $20,000. Water-front lots from $15,000 to $25,000. Seashores from $20,000 to $75,000. And these are not in Miami. They are miles out, 10 miles out, 15 miles out, and 30 miles out.145 The creditor also described lots being resold and marked up with each new sale, how literally everybody was into real estate and making “easy money,” and how everything was for sale. One
143 Ibid., 44-5, 175; Vanderblue, “The Florida Land Boom,” 113. 144 Derr, Some Kind of Paradise, 45. 145 Vanderblue, “The Florida Land Boom,” 114, 116-8. 43
could have “independence” on five or ten acre plots of farms and ten story hotels overshadowed the land around small citrus towns such as Lake Wales and Haines City, making “the sky line hideous.”146 The land boom of Florida in the 1920s was compared to land booms in Chicago in the 1830s and California in the 1880s as the streets were busy with those looking for a land deal to make them rich. However, two very overwhelming contrasts were that in the Florida land boom people had access to transportation and advertising. Cities were marketed with appealing names, as Fort Lauderdale was the “Tropical Wonderland,” Miami was the “Magic City,” St. Petersburg, the “Sunshine City,” and Orlando, the “City Beautiful.”147 Spanish names were also used for developments and attractions and names like Hollywood and Santa Monica were borrowed from California. Northern papers were filled with pictures of beautiful women in bathing suits, palm trees, islands, and moonlit night scenes, making it to many the “American Riviera.”148 This no doubt contributed to the population spikes in the peninsular counties with the larger cities. In Dade County, the population grew from 85 in 1870 to 42,753 in 1920 and then 142,955 in 1930. Hillsborough County grew from 14,941 in 1890 to 88,257 in 1920 and 153,519 the next decade. Palm Beach County had a population of 5,577 in its first recorded census in 1910 and grew to 51,781 by 1930. In contrast, many of the counties of the Panhandle and Middle Florida grew slightly at a steady rate each decade from 1870 to 1930, usually less than 10,000, and some, such as Calhoun, Gadsden, Jefferson, Santa Rosa, Wakulla, Walton, and Washington experienced at least one decade of decline with Leon County declining in three censuses in 1890, 1910, and 1920.149 From 1926 onward, Florida began to feel a state depression a few years before the Great Depression burdened the rest of the country. While it did little to affect the population growth in southern Florida, it seems that it may have had an effect on the total farm acreage for the state. By 1930, thirty-seven of Florida’s 53 counties existing in 1920 had fewer total acres of land in farms than recorded in the previous census. This was comparable to the rest of the United States
146 Ibid., 119-120, 123-4. 147 Ibid., 120-1, 123. 148 Ibid., 123-4, 126; Derr, Some Kind of Paradise, 37-60. 149 University of Virginia Library, Geospatial and Statistical Data Center, Historical Census Browser, “Florida: Total Population 1840-1960,” http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/index.html (accessed July 29, 2011). 44
as 29 of the 48 states decreased in farm acreage as well.150 Still, for the most part, Northwest Florida’s counties kept their agriculturally-based economies and rural lifestyle. In a personal interview with a Holmes County resident who grew up on the Florida/Alabama line in a tenant farming family during the 1930s, Mattie Brackin Reeves explained, “We were so poor already that we really didn’t know there was a Depression.”151 The destitute state of the region and imminent threat prior to World War II brought a military presence to the area and Air Force bases such as Eglin and Tyndall were established on large areas of sparsely populated, forested land in Okaloosa, Walton, and Bay Counties that had immediate access to the space of the Gulf.152 Farm acreage appears to have recovered substantially in most Panhandle counties by 1950, except for Bay and Wakulla counties, two of four counties with negative acreage in the state.153 However, surrounding areas of the cities also experienced suburbanization as did much of the rest of the country during the 1940s and 1950s, and this led to lower percentages of rural farm populations. According to one sociologist, improved transportation facilities and networks of high-speed highways, mass industrial production that relocated closer to the rural workforce, and a change in agricultural production and management were all responsible for the “social and physical demarcations between rural and urban settlements [that] have tended to become blurred and indistinct, if not entirely obliterated.”154 Between 1940 and 1950, the United States farm population declined nearly 5.5 million and lost another 4 million by 1959, cutting the total in half to 12 percent. The South experienced the greatest loss; where it once reigned supreme in its agricultural standing in the nation, in 1960 it was said to have less than half of the country’s farm population. In correlation to this, the nation’s rural non-farm population grew 32.4% in the
150University of Virginia Library, Geospatial and Statistical Data Center, Historical Census Browser, “Florida: Total Acres Land in Farms 1900-1950,” http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/index.html (accessed July 29, 2011). 151 Mattie Brackin Reeves in discussion with the author, April 1999. 152 Eglin Air Force Base, “Eglin Air Force Base History,” http://www.eglin.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=6061 (accessed December 30, 2011); Tyndall Air Force Base, “Tyndall’s History,” http://www.tyndall.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123150955 (accessed December 30, 2011); Tyndall Air Force Base, “Tyndall AFB History facts 2,” http://www.tyndall.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123166715 (accessed December 30, 2011); Tyndall Air Force Base, “Tyndall Heritage,” http://www.tyndall.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=4344 (accessed November 19, 2012). 153University of Virginia Library, Geospatial and Statistical Data Center, Historical Census Browser, “Florida: Total Acres Land in Farms 1900-1950,” http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/index.html (accessed July 29, 2011). 154 T. Stanton Dietrich, “Nature and Directions of Suburbanization in the South,” Social Forces 39, no. 2 (Dec., 1960): 181. 45
decade beginning in 1940 and then 56.1% in the 1950s. This was quite a contrast from the urban population, which only grew 21.8% and 9.4%, respectively. Suburbanization was a historical phenomenon that had never really occurred before and the change had taken place so rapidly that rural community living, its structure and behavior, were intermixed with urban living, which blurred the distinction between ruralism and urbanism, making “the noncity dweller who is not a farmer…become the back-door neighbor of both the farmer and the urbanite.”155 The “organization man” was hence born, commuting between home and office.156 By 1960, some of the counties of Northwest Florida with a majority rural populace that had been dominated by an agricultural way of life fit this trend as they reported high percentages of rural non-farm: Santa Rosa-77.3%, Holmes-71.9%, Calhoun-83.3%, Jefferson-83.2%, and Wakulla-97.4%.157 Many of the children who worked long hours on self-sustaining (though at times barely surviving) family farms of the 1940s to 1960s grew up and looked for more financially rewarding and seemingly less unpredictable occupations in education, government, small businesses in town, or big corporations in the larger urban areas. Some residents even tried to continue the farming tradition, but upon failing, looked for other means to make a living while staying at home on family land. Fifth generation Holmes County resident, Zen Riley, recalled a miserable year in the early 1970s of trying to farm corn and soybean crops in partnership with his brother-in-law and being unable to afford the adequate machinery or large acreage needed to make a profit. He had tried selling life insurance (which he felt compromised his morals in selling a “luxury” in such poor socioeconomic areas), owned a couple of semi-trucks, and finally, upon the encouragement of his wife who was already an elementary teacher, he went to college and earned a degree in Physical Education in the late 1970s.158 This was characteristic of the rural South from the post-World War II years as manufacturing, construction, access to education, business, and administration, all typically urban careers, provided employment opportunities to those farm laborers without advanced skills. The advent of the internal combustion engine tractor took the place of the family mule and made agriculture less labor intensive resulting in less of a need for farm workers. Those who
155 Ibid., 181-3. 156 Ibid., 184. 157 University of Virginia Library, Geospatial and Statistical Data Center, Historical Census Browser, “Florida: County-Level Percentage Rural Non-farm Population, 1960,” http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/index.html (accessed July 29, 2011). 158 Zen Riley in discussion with the author, April 1999. 46
did continue to farm diversified their crops, cultivating tobacco, soybeans, peanuts, corn, wheat, and fresh fruits and vegetables. Although cotton had declined from the 1920s to 1945, its production saw a resurgence in the South in the 1980s and 1990s. Other agricultural markets included the large-scale raising of beef cattle, poultry, and catfish.159 During the 1950s and 1960s, the coastal areas such as Pensacola Beach, Fort Walton Beach, and Panama City Beach began to tap into the tourist industry more heavily as well. Visitors had been welcomed by such entrepreneurs as W. T. Sharpless and Gideon (Gid) Thomas since the late 1920s and early 1930s. Sharpless had looked at making a resort at Long Beach, but was killed in 1931 by someone who did not appreciate the toll of fifty-cents for his beach property. Thomas constructed a twelve-room, two-story hotel and guest cottages on his 104 acres that he called Panama City Beach in May 1936, but he worked himself to death (literally) in just a year. The Churchwell family expanded on Sharpless’ Long Beach Resort and the McCorquodale family created a resort named Sunnyside and accommodations at the “Y,” where State Road 79 intersects with US 98. Thomas was the first to meet with the obstacle of the lack of a road to the Gulf that forced his investors to push their cars in the sand, which he overcame by hauling in Apalachicola seashells to create a suitable surface for automobiles. People also considered the “ugly white sand” an inhospitable place for a garden as they felt “dirt” was useful for that one purpose.160 Fort Walton Beach, originally called Camp Walton until 1931 and Fort Walton until 1953, is located neither on a fort nor a beach, but rather built its tourist industry on Okaloosa Island (a small portion of Santa Rosa Island), actually outside of the town’s incorporated limits, and its Billy Bowlegs Festival that is held as a kick-off for the summer tourist season each year. Farther to the east, Pensacola Beach began catering to tourists in 1931 upon a lease of Santa Rosa Island. By 1952, a writer had coined the term “Miracle Strip” and into the next decade it is apparent in tourism literature that it was considered by promoters to include the entire coast from Pensacola Beach to Panama City Beach. Motels and hotels galore sprang up along the Strip during this time, with the four-story Holiday Inn overshadowing all others in 1964. As if tourists and locals weren’t impressed enough, the popularity of luxury condominiums in the 1970s brought even taller structures with thousands of rooms. Roadside attractions were also a part of
159 Donald Winters, “Agriculture in the Post-World War II South,” in The Rural South Since World War II, ed. R. Douglas Hurt (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998): 9-21. 160 Hollis, Florida’s Miracle Strip, 6-10. 47
the lure of this stretch and some tried to capitalize on the tourist industry by using Florida’s history, environment, and creatures. Attractions included the Snake-A-Torium, Gulfarium and Gulf World with their dolphins, Museum of the Sea and Indian, and a Spanish village. Other venues with huge, colorful statues and rides were miniature or “Goofy” golf and amusement parks such as Petticoat Junction and Miracle Strip.161 Where once the ocean was “the” attraction, these tourism products served as a wonderland of distraction. Central and Southern Florida continued their own marketing to tourists post-World War II, utilizing the environment and roadside attraction tactic in the same manner as their Northwestern counterparts. Weeki Wachee Springs opened in 1947 in Hernando County and became well-known for its “mermaids,” beautiful women who performed acts such as ballet and could stay underwater for extended periods of time using a tubing system to breathe. The owner also had built an underwater viewing area. Silver Springs in Ocala had offered underwater viewing in their glass-bottom boats since 1868.162 The peninsula was not immune to the amusement park frenzy either, but rather one in particular changed the region of Central Florida, if not the entire state. Walt Disney’s dream became a reality in 1971, although he had passed away five years earlier. In 1965, he purchased 27,400 acres in Orange and Osceola counties for $5 million, approximately $180/acre, in a sworn-to-secrecy deal that he threatened to walk away from if the handful of people who knew leaked any information before Disney decided to go public with the plans. After the news was released, the adjacent lands sold for $80,000/acre. He also persuaded the state legislature to create the self-regulating Reedy Creek Improvement District around the site, which allowed total control by the landholding board of supervisors to “drain, ditch, run power lines, create a fire department, provide a security force, assess taxes, develop and impose a master plan and building codes, construct roads and towns and theme parks.”163 Sixty percent of the average 44 million visitors to the state in the late 1990s came to see some part of Disney’s Magic Kingdom. Other big parks such as Busch Gardens in Tampa, Sea World in Orlando, and Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral have created a “belt of playgrounds and wonderworlds.”164
161 Ibid., 13-16, 19, 23, 34-49, 53-54, 67, 72, 76, 78, 90, 131-3, 147. 162 Florida Memory, “Roadside Attractions in Florida: Tourism and Spectacle Before Disney,” Photo Exhibits, Springs, Rivers, and Fountains, http://www.floridamemory.com/photographiccollection/photo_exhibits/roadside- attractions/attractions2.php (accessed November 20, 2012). 163 Derr, Some Kind of Paradise, 376-8. 164 Ibid., 383-4. 48
While the two regions of Florida used the same tactics of tourism, the type of tourist patronizing these sections were typically as different as they were when Henry Flagler opened up the East Coast. Where South Florida had long been considered the “American Riviera,” many of the tourists that came to the beaches of the Miracle Strip tended to be U.S. Southerners, lending the area the name “Redneck Riviera.” The Gulf Coast was a closer location geographically for those who needed a less expensive vacation and the “classier” beaches like those of Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale still invited the wealthy and more refined Northerners. There were even different high seasons for the locales as summer drew the crowds in the Northwest and winter months provided a warm escape down south for those from the colder climates. A Miami Herald writer, Jack Kofoed, noted in his 1960 book, The Florida Story, that “…The Florida Panhandle is not visited by many of the millions who seek sun tan and diversion on the Gold Coast during the winter.”165 In adding to the “Redneck” moniker was likely the fact that many of the entrepreneurs and investors who had built the businesses of the Miracle Strip were from other Southern states as well, mostly Alabama and Georgia. This area has also intimately been referred to as L.A. or “Lower Alabama.” In the last couple of decades of the twentieth century, the delight of the “Redneck” Riviera began to fade and feel old-fashioned in the tourism market, prompting several Chambers of Commerce to adopt more appealing catchphrases and distance themselves from the negative image. Panama City Beach used “the World’s Most Beautiful Beaches” while “the Emerald Coast” was used for the Okaloosa/Walton County area in reference to the aqua green ocean waters (although there is said to be some controversy over where the Emerald Coast actually begins and ends as it is thought that Okaloosa wanted to claim the slogan without including the beaches of South Walton).166 Disney World, in contrast, had opened up the tourist market to international patrons and created a summer tourist season in Central Florida.167 As the timber industry, railroad networks, promotion of Florida’s frontier landscapes, and tourism comparatively touched each section of the state, it furthered exponential growth in population. The state’s citizens numbered from 1,897,414 in 1940, nearly 2.8 million in 1950, 5 million in 1960, and 7 million in 1970.168 Much of the population growth was in Central and
165 Hollis, Florida’s Miracle Strip, 23-4. 166 Ibid., 24, 26-7. 167 Derr, Some Kind of Paradise, 383. 168 Ibid., 337. 49
South Florida, and by 1960, Dade County had nearly 1 million residents alone, with the next closest counts in Duval at 455,411 and Hillsborough at 397,788. Several other counties reported populations in the triple thousands that year, but only Escambia was in the Panhandle as it held one of the oldest and largest cities in Florida. It, along with Bay and Okaloosa, were among the leaders overall in gaining population in the two decades following the onset of World War II and certainly their military presence contributed to the increases of 99,162; 46,445; 48,275, respectively. Other Panhandle counties remained relatively low and with little growth, with smaller counties such as Holmes, Jefferson, Liberty, Wakulla, and Washington showing a decline.169 In correlation, counties with larger populations and showing extreme gains also exhibited lower percentages of native populations, showing between 21% and 47% residing in their state of birth in 1960. Furthermore, less populated Panhandle counties had higher native populations with percentages between 49.4% and 80.7%; twelve of the 16 counties in Northwest Florida had percentages greater than 60%.170 This tends to exhibit that the strong kinship and loyalty characteristics typical of the Florida Cracker (and the Scots-Irish background) were still heavily present in this area. Additionally, a large Panhandle landowner, Edward Ball, can also be credited with keeping development (and thus population growth) out of Northwest Florida in the mid-twentieth century through his control and interest in forests and the pulp industry (although later his company paradoxically encouraged development).171 It is worth mentioning as well that some of the Creek Indian families that had escaped removal during the Seminole Wars had assimilated into society throughout Northwest Florida, often living as whites and hiding their identities. Some continued with Indian traditions, including dress, using Creek words, hunting and fishing techniques, herbal remedies, crafts, and burial practices. Due to the sparse population and wide availability of natural waters and woods, some were able to subsist off the land and live outside of civilization well into the 1960s. Many intermarried with whites, but maintained their connections to their kin through reunions. It wasn’t until the first land claims cases started to appear in the 1940s and Civil Rights awareness of the 1950s and 1960s that those of Creek heritage began to emerge and it almost became
169 University of Virginia Library, Geospatial and Statistical Data Center, Historical Census Browser, “Florida: Total Population 1840-1960,” http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/index.html (accessed July 29, 2011). 170 University of Virginia Library, Geospatial and Statistical Data Center, Historical Census Browser, “Florida: County-Level Percentage Native Population Residing in the State of Birth, 1960,” http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/index.html (accessed July 29, 2011). 171 Derr, Some Kind of Paradise, 324. 50
popular to be able to claim Indian blood. In 1970, census records identify 882 Indians living in the Panhandle, but following this, Creek registration drives put the descendants’ numbers around 6,000.172 In comparison, South Florida has tended to be more racially diverse. From the Cold War into the 1980s, Haitian, Cuban, and Nicaraguan refugees flooded South Florida, increasing racial tensions with whites and blacks as the groups often clashed with the immigrants. Miami’s crime rate soared, especially in homicides, as Cuban drug lords made the city the drug capital of the western hemisphere and scared the hell out of the Anglo-Americans, prompting them to relocate out of their former paradise to Broward and Palm Beach counties.173 Jewish Northerners also comprised a large portion of South Florida as Jews had been relocating to Miami since the 1920s and by the 1940s had the largest Jewish population in the state.174 The Seminoles and Miccosukis that had been moved onto reservations in the swamplands provided a source of entertainment and crafts for those visiting, but were largely ignored.175 The “Silver Migration” of retirees contributed to a population rate of 18% over the age of 65 by 1980, with a large concentration (varying from 33%-50%) in the southern coastal and central Florida counties.176 This cultural and racial diversity tends to explain the differences in voting and beliefs. While not all inclusive, Florida’s northern region tends to identify with conservative candidates (due to a strong Christian base) and more liberal attitudes prevail in the southern region. Un- Reconstructed Southerners can still be found almost 150 years later in North Florida, although the sentiment and focus (at least in the public historical sense) has shifted to remembering heritage and a passing way of life. Gun ownership and hunting for recreation has been noted as being higher in the Northern Florida region as well, although there are certainly individuals and families who still subsist from hunting, farming, and bartering.177 South Florida has long dealt with roadway congestion, overuse of natural resources, and overdevelopment. This was especially apparent during the 1992 evacuation of residents as Hurricane Andrew approached and decimated Central and South Florida. Agriculturally, South Florida is dominated by citrus groves, cattle ranches, and sugarcane fields, while North Florida produces more field crops such
172 Ellsworth and Dysart, “West Florida’s Forgotten People,” 424, 426-430, 433, 435-8. 173 Derr, Some Kind of Paradise, 349-351. 174 Mizrach, “The North in the South,” 16. 175 Ibid., 15. 176 Derr, Some Kind of Paradise, 339-340. 177 Mizrach, “The North in the South,” 17; Author’s personal knowledge. 51 as peanuts and cotton and still has the highest percentage of timberlands as most counties are at least 50% forested.178 Each section looks at the other with curiosity and fear and likely uses generalizations about each other. Ironically, northern Florida has tended to be similar to the rest of the Southern states and southern Florida has been referred to as a Northern colony, although there are those who would like to remove this dividing line and make the two regions a bland mirror image.
178 Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, 2012 Florida Agriculture By the Numbers, (Rev. October 2012), 23, 41, 55, 106, http://www.florida-agriculture.com/brochures/P-01304.pdf (accessed January 13, 2013). 52
Figure 3-3 Galt City Advertisement, circa 1885 (Courtesy of the State Library and Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, Florida Broadsides collection, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/212410)
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Figure 3-4a Jefferson County, Florida, Advertisement (Front), 1887 (Courtesy of the State Library and Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, Florida Broadsides collection, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/212461)
54
Figure 3-4b Jefferson County, Florida, Advertisement (Back), 1887 (Courtesy of the State Library and Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, Florida Broadsides collection, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/212462)
55
CHAPTER FOUR
SMALL VS. SPRAWL: RURAL LAND’S VALUE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
It is no secret to Panhandle residents that their precious home in Northwest Florida has changed rapidly as the twenty-first century arrived. It seemed as if overnight the available land was on the radar of developers and a madness of construction had descended upon every city and town along with astronomical real estate prices as many landowners felt they were sitting on gold, similar to South Florida around the turn of the previous century. If a young native resident dreamed of carrying on the tradition of a rural way of life, buying some acreage nearby or adjacent to the family homestead, and raising a family with that same high quality of life, it appeared to have been ushered into a secret room full of developers and real estate conspirators without any hope of return to a simpler time before the madness. Development was on a fast- track from the coastline to the interior of the smaller, rural counties and the word “growth” was on everyone’s minds. Part of the growth and development of the Panhandle and especially the “Redneck Riviera” coastal destinations came about to court the evolving tourist industry in the area. As mentioned earlier, the Gulf Coast from Panama City Beach to Pensacola Beach has been marketed to tourists since the early 1900s, but it seemed to take almost one hundred years for reality to set in that land was running out. In 2000, Panama City Beach began tearing down the smaller buildings that had graced the coastline for decades to make room for more skyward, compact properties. In two years, several of the beach’s longtime motels (the Majestic, the Long Beach Inn, and the Port of Call) were bulldozed and high-rise hotels and condos were constructed in the sand. Where families had once enjoyed the tacky but fun roadside attractions and people once slept on the beach, now the focus was on a different type of tourist, “a change in the caliber of tourist,” according to then city manager Richard Jackson.179 Perhaps one of the most disturbing observations and regular complaints from those who have visited the area for years is the view of the ocean, or lack thereof, caused by the newer high-rise buildings that are spaced so closely together along Front Beach Road. According to the Panama City Beach Comprehensive Growth Development Plan, “a sampling of the newer resorts
179 Hollis, Florida’s Miracle Strip, 58-60. 56
shows less than 3% of the units are homesteaded properties.”180 The plan also reveals that each year the tourist numbers may fluctuate due to hurricane activity and economic factors, but visitor statistics remain steady and the permanent residency of the city has seen little growth.181 However, developers saw a need (or opportunity, depending on the perspective) for more rooms (often up-scale) to continuously woo Bay County’s number one industry, where it is estimated that over half of the 7 million visitors per year that vacation at the beaches of Northwest Florida come.182 In 2008, there were 11,447 condominium units vs. 3,969 single family structures. One explanation for little population growth for permanent residents is the discrepancy between the cost of housing and the median household income in Bay County. Between 2003 and 2005, the median sales price for a single family residence more than doubled from $138,900 to $283,400 and average condominium sales rose from $145,000 to $395,500. This inflated price is generally not affordable for local residents when the median household income for the county ranged from $35,547 in 2000 to $44,364 in 2010.183 The Emerald Coast beaches, Destin, Okaloosa Island, Fort Walton Beach, and the Beaches of South Walton (including the famous and chic town of Seaside), all heavily depend on their tourist economies as well and would explain why an event such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in April 2010 that scared visitors from coming to the area would have such a devastating effect. Although little oil ever reached the Emerald Coast shores, negative media coverage was enough to coerce visitors to choose other destinations for the higher revenue spring and summer seasons, hurting local businesses and bed tax revenues collected by the local governments. In the year that followed, British Petroleum (BP), as owner of the oil drilling company that caused the spill, issued grant money to the State of Florida three times, some of which is reported to have been given to places as far away as Dade County that was unaffected by the spill. However, the Northwest Florida Tourism Council was given the latter check of $30 million to be
180 City of Panama City Beach, Panama City Beach Comprehensive Growth Development Plan, Section 4 Transportation (October 2009), 7, www.pcbgov.com/uploads/plans/1/section4/section4-transportation.pdf (accessed January 19, 2012). 181 Ibid. 182 Florida Department of Transportation, West Bay Parkway Segment 2 Draft Wetland Evaluation Report (February 2011), 3-5, http://westbayparkway.com/pdf/West%20Bay%20Parkway%20Segment%202%20Wetland%20Evaluation%20Repo rt.pdf (accessed January 19, 2012). 183 United States Census Bureau, “Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates,” http://www.census.gov/did/www/saipe/data/interactive/# (accessed January 19, 2012). 57
divided amongst the seven counties on the Gulf Coast for marketing and letting tourists know the Gulf Coast was as pristine as ever and still open for business.184 While tourism may not directly impose on the inland rural areas of Northwest Florida, it continues the discussion about the link between tourism as part of the local economy, population growth, land use, and development in the region and how all of these factors have contributed or will contribute to “sprawl.” While it is difficult to measure and define sprawl, researchers have attempted to describe it involving certain elements that generally include dispersal of low-density development that encumbers lots of land (sometimes considered wasteful), virtual dependence on automobiles for transportation, and a geographic spread between housing and places to work, educate, and shop.185 Since World War II, automobile ownership for Americans has become increasingly commonplace and offered easier movement between rural areas and metropolitan centers and accommodated the suburbanization trend that occurred. Thus, the growth and development around cities led to environmental issues and an awareness in the 1970s that legislative action was needed on a federal level. Despite the efforts of Congress, no proposals were ever approved and since then, unplanned growth can be cited for dividing the rural landscape and causing the loss of agricultural lands. Governments at the local, state, and federal level have been forced to acknowledge the consequences of little to no planning as it relates to growth and development.186 The U.S. Census Bureau provides definitions concerning land use categories according to population and while these definitions have evolved since the 1940s, the most current standards used for the 2010 Census are suitable for the purposes of discussion between urban and rural areas. In simple terms, “urban” is defined as “densely developed territory, encompassing residential, commercial, and other nonresidential urban land uses within which social and economic interactions occur” and “rural” is anything that is not considered urban.187 An Urbanized Area (UA) is defined as “a statistical geographic entity consisting of a densely settled
184 Tom McLaughlin, “BP marketing grants headed here,” Northwest Florida Daily News, April 12, 2011, https://login.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/docview/861412226?accountid =4840 (accessed August 23, 2011). 185 Ralph E. Heimlich and William D. Anderson, “Development at the Urban Fringe and Beyond: Impacts on Agriculture and Rural Land,” (Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service (June 2001), 9-10. Available online at http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aer803/. 186 Ibid., 1-2, 10, 18. 187 United States Department of Commerce, Census Bureau, “Urban Area Criteria for the 2010 Census,” Federal Register 76, no. 164 (August 24, 2011): 15, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-08-24/pdf/2011-21647.pdf (accessed January 23, 2012). 58
core created from census tracts or blocks and contiguous qualifying territory that together have a minimum population of at least 50,000 persons” and an Urban Cluster (UC) is a smaller area with “at least 2,500 persons but fewer than 50,000 persons.” 188 Metropolitan Statistical Areas have “at least one urbanized area that has a population of at least 50,000” and “comprises a central county or counties containing the urbanized area, plus adjacent outlying counties having a high degree of social and economic integration with the central county as measured by commuting.”189 A Micropolitan Statistical Area, a newer term, consists of “at least one urban cluster that has a population of at least 10,000, but less than 50,000.”190 Released in September 2010, Northwest Florida data includes four separate Metropolitan areas recorded as follows with urbanized areas listed in respect to population and the counties that the Metro area encompasses: 1)Pensacola-Ferry Pass-Brent (Escambia, Santa Rosa), 2) Crestview-Fort Walton Beach-Destin (Okaloosa), 3) Panama City-Lynn Haven-Panama City Beach (Bay), 4) Tallahassee (Gadsden, Jefferson, Leon, Wakulla). In contrast, there are 26 combined Metropolitan and Micropolitan Areas in the remaining parts of the state (Northeast, Central, and South).191 In the USDA report, Development at the Urban Fringe and Beyond: Impacts on Agriculture and Rural Land, released in June 2001, authors Heimlich and Anderson discuss that there are two major growth categories that cause apprehension for farmers, government leaders, residents, etc. The first occurs in the existing urban fringe where development creeps into the rural areas of the metropolitan counties. The second appears outside the urban edge, a greater distance into the countryside, generally on larger parcels of 10 acres or more. Several factors influence this growth and seem to be dependent upon each other. For instance, population increase is most often the catalyst that leads to a demand for land and new housing as well as the dynamics of households, involving marriage, divorce, and/or family size. Economic conditions, job opportunities, and wealth may lead to an upgrade in housing for families.192 It is widely held in our national culture that part of the American Dream usually includes the privilege of home ownership. In household surveys conducted in the late 1980s and 1990s, large percentages of
188 Ibid. 189 Ibid. 190 Ibid. 191 United States Census Bureau, Population Division, “Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas and Components, December 2009, With Codes,” http://www.census.gov/population/metro/files/lists/2009/List1.txt (accessed January 8, 2011). 192 Heimlich and Anderson, “Development at the Urban Fringe and Beyond,” 12-3, 15-6. 59
Americans stated a preference for personal open space and rural or small town surroundings rather than an urban area with a population of 50,000 or more. People tend to be drawn to low- density development both at the urban fringe and in rural areas for the positive quality of life benefits that are offered such as affordability of housing (as compared to urban real estate), lower crime rates, better air quality, flexibility of transportation by personal automobile (rather than transit schedules), and the appeal of a larger yard and other natural aesthetics. These benefits are often considered worthwhile despite the cost of living farther away from personal conveniences and social activities that are found in urban areas.193
Figure 4-1 2010 Census Florida Population Density (Courtesy of United States Census Bureau)
Northwest Florida has not been immune to development in the fringe and rural areas. This region was once locally and affectionately known as “The Last Frontier” due to the larger, undeveloped tracts that in the past were not on the radar of developers due to its lack of quick-
193 Ibid., 17-8. 60
revenue potential. However, in the last decade or so companies, such as the St. Joe Company, have been seeking a better return on vast properties. As Florida’s second largest private landowner, St. Joe took the reigns as one of the major players in development of Northwest Florida. Once the largest private landowner in Florida with over 850,000 acres in holdings, it had reduced its inventory by 2009 so much that the new title was handed to Plum Creek Timber Company, which is also the nation’s largest private landowner.194 Although it turned to real estate development in 1997, the company was started in 1936 as a paper mill venture called the St. Joe Paper Company, taking its name from its location in the town of Port St. Joe in Gulf County. The company was the brainchild of Edward Ball, who, along with his brother-in-law, Alfred duPont, wanted to make use of the thousands of acres of timberlands and properties they had purchased throughout the 1920s and 1930s. However, duPont passed away in the same year the deal was made and never got to see it come to fruition. In 1940, Ball took charge in a company reorganization, and over the years, the company had offshoot enterprises such as sugarcane operations. Upon Ball’s death in 1981, the company’s future was uncertain as board members fought each other, but in 1985, another reorganization took place, and the following year, a real estate division was created and St. Joe went public by selling shares of stock. In 1997, Peter Rummell became CEO, and the company was renamed “The St. Joe Company,” and the purchase of Arvida was made. Rummell brought with him the theology of New Urbanism, being in charge of the planned city of Celebration under Disney. From this New Urbanism and expertise from Arvida came developments in south Walton County called Topsail Hill and WaterColor, catering largely to an upper class tourist and vacation-home buyer population. 195 In interest of developing their inland properties, the company moved into “New Ruralism,” a term coined by the St. Joe Company itself in a white paper released in 2005. A play on New Urbanism, where planned, tight-knit and often walkable towns and communities were built and people have a connection as neighbors, this rural type of concept is to provide a connection with nature and the land. The targeted market group is baby boomers who are in the retirement stage of their lives and desire a second home or relocation. Three types of
194 Robert Trigaux, “St. Joe Co., long Florida’s largest private land owner, overtaken by Plum Creek Timber Co.,” Tampa Bay Times, (May 27, 2009), http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/venturebiz/content/st-joe-co-long-floridas- largest-private-land-owner-overtaken-plum-creek-timber-co/2094225 (accessed December 9, 2011). 195 Ziewitz and Wiaz, Green Empire, 49-51, 55, 87, 103-4, 120, 131, 125, 163. 61
developments were detailed in the paper, each with nature-sounding names to appeal to the emotions—RiverCamps, WhiteFence Farms, and Florida Ranches. RiverCamps were described as personal, private retreats located along water systems with a shared common area “preserved for conservation.” The WhiteFence Farms were designed to resemble a homestead with a farmhouse and optional barns and stables to obtain the “old farm and equestrian feel.” The Florida Ranches are marketed to the wealthy sportsman with recreational activities. Sites were likely to be near rivers and have “land suited for wildlife habitation,” but would “improve” the area with “clearing, fencing, and road stabilization.” Even the descriptive imagery for these St. Joe real estate “products” was meant to be influential, using phrases such as “rise with the sun, fish with the tides, and rest with the moon,” and “a simpler life from a simpler time and wanting to reconnect with the land without the need to make a living from it.”196 For many native, rural Floridians, rural life is much different than those dreams of grandeur which St. Joe has proposed. Older generations in the region have struggled with and against nature while surviving it, raised children here who also raised children here, buried their parents here, and some might find it offensive that a company who once provided jobs to local residents in the paper industry would surround them with people who likely are unfamiliar with the true beauty and laboring of rural living of the past even if it was most often “a hard living.” Further, the prices for this luxury rural life would be unaffordable for most Panhandle residents. According to St. Joe in the 2005 paper, RiverCamp home sites ranged from an average of $174,500 for interior locations to $1 million for water-front views, acreage in the WhiteFence Farms was expected to price from $20,000 to $75,000 per acre, with every farm site between 5 and 20 acres, and for the “serious” rancher, there were the Florida Ranches with 50 to 150 acre sites, priced at $4,500 to $10,000 per acre. St. Joe even disclosed that early on a large number of buyers of the RiverCamp sites were from outside of the local market.197 This sort of “New Ruralism” also caught on with other timber companies during the real estate boom in the mid-2000s. The Archer Group of Itera Timberlands divided its large timber
196 This information was accessed in July 2007 as published on the St. Joe Company’s website in their white paper, “Defining the New Ruralism,” but has since been removed. See also David Moffat, “New Ruralism: Agriculture at the Metropolitan Edge,” Places 18, No. 2 (Summer 2006): 73, http://places.designobserver.com/media/pdf/New_Ruralism:__434.pdf (accessed December 9, 2011); Abby Goodnough, “In Florida, a Big Developer Is Counting on Rural Chic,” The New York Times, August 22, 2005, Late edition, Section A, Column 1, National Desk, 11, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/22/national/22land.html?_r=0 (accessed December 9, 2011). 197 Ibid. 62
stands into lots for sale in community developments such as Wrights Creek, Canopy Crossing, and Reedy Creek (1800+ acres), all in rural Holmes County (where St. Joe has no current land holdings). These timberlands converted to residential areas came with deed restrictions and high price tags as well.198 The website of the Reedy Creek Crossing development marketed the gated subdivision as an “area surrounded by forests, creeks, clear springs, rivers, lakes, swamps and wetlands…” where “property owners have an opportunity to see nature at its very best…lush forest land…to support a wide variety of wildlife…” with “recreational activities for the family.”199 This chance to experience nature is exclusive to owners, however, as board minutes indicate “no trespassing signs” were placed by September 2009 and the county sheriff’s office was informed that no hunting was allowed on the premises and trespassers were to be arrested.200 According to local hunters, they have generally enjoyed the freedom of hunting large timber tracts unrestricted near their homes for generations as company property owners often did not tend to the woodlands for long periods and trespassing was generally not an issue. Nevertheless, this privilege is a thing of the past as the minutes from the January 23, 2011 meeting of Reedy Creek board members show a discussion of the by-laws that allowed for property owners to hunt recreationally but that it did not include “locals.” Board members decided it would need to be voted upon at the April meeting, which would be held in West Palm Beach or Boca Raton (both affluent towns), “depending upon where the majority of the property owners reside,” further indicating a non-local ownership.201 In the recent year, many property owners in these developments have filed for foreclosure and have addresses ranging from South Florida to New England.202 As of December 2011, no homes had been constructed in any of the three developments.
198 This information was accessed in July 2007 at the Itera Timberlands/The Archer Group website, under Florida Properties; however, this has since been removed. See the Russian-based Itera Group’s website for more information about the Archer Group, an Itera company, buying timberlands in U.S. Southern states for “quality country housing” at http://www.iteragroup.com/isp/eng/index/smi/470/13 (last accessed March 8, 2013). 199 Reedy Creek Crossing, “Our Neighborhood,” http://reedycreekcrossing.org/our.neighborhood/index.html (accessed August 2, 2011). 200 Reedy Creek Crossing, “Board Meeting Minutes,” September 18, 2009, http://reedycreekcrossing.org/our.board/index.html (accessed August 2, 2011). 201 Reedy Creek Crossing, “Board Meeting Minutes,” January 23, 2011, http://reedycreekcrossing.org/our.board/index.html (accessed August 2, 2011). 202 See the Holmes County Property Appraiser website www.qpublic.net/holmes.com (example: Parcel Number 1801.00-001-000-090.000) as well as www3.myfloridacounty.com (example: Case Number 2010-524CA). Also see the Holmes County Clerk of Court website for current Foreclosure Sales at http://www.holmesclerk.com/documents/WEBSITE-FORECLOSURESALES_005.pdf. 63
It is interesting to compare these developments with the Holmes County Vision posted on the county website: Holmes County should provide a development environment sensitive to the communities’ independent spirit built on an agricultural base that values land ownership, has a strong value system, is aware of the area’s abundant natural resources and provides opportunities for families to continue to obtain land tracts that allow sufficient space to enjoy open space. It should further seek to provide economic opportunities to allow those who live in the County to work in the County. At the same time there must be a balance that preserves agricultural and environmentally sensitive land for the productivity and enjoyment of future generations.203
According to Heimlich and Anderson, as growth expands outward at the urban fringe and into rural areas, other by-products of low-density development and population growth naturally follow as new residents create a demand for infrastructure improvements in the form of roads, utilities, schools, and then to court consumer needs, shopping centers and other businesses are built and more of the workforce is closer that all eventually leads to more housing and expansion of the urban edge.204 The St. Joe Company has exhibited this relationship between growth and development and the demand for business expansion and infrastructure. In 2009, the company donated 4,000 acres for construction of the new Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport in West Bay in Bay County, which held its grand opening in May 2010.205 The company secured Southwest Airlines as the main carrier and the low fares provided by Southwest and competitive fares from Delta contributed to an increase in passenger traffic in 2011 as well as greater revenues for the year than were previously projected.206 After the real estate market bust and economic downturn, the company’s then CEO Britt Greene conveyed in March 2010 that St. Joe would be focusing more on commercial development surrounding the airport and less on residential due to the possible revenue that could provide sustainability for the next two decades
203 Holmes County, Florida, “Holmes County Vision,” http://www.holmescountyfl.org/documents/visionstatement_002.pdf (accessed August 2, 2011). 204 Heimlich and Anderson, “Development at the Urban Fringe and Beyond,” 15. 205 Melissa Nelson, “St. Joe Co. weathers recession by thinking big,” Newswire, November 2, 2009, Business News section; Pat Kelly, “New airport impresses public at grand opening,” Panama City News Herald, May 22, 2010, Section B. 206 Pat Kelly, “Airport traffic continues to rise,” Panama City News Herald, December 16, 2011; Pat Kelly, “Airport outperforming 2011 budget projections,” Panama City News Herald, August 6, 2011. 64
and that the company had already been working to attract large companies such as FedEx and UPS.207 St. Joe continues to pursue its goal of stripping the Panhandle of the “Redneck Riviera” image that had appealed to Southern tourists for decades with inexpensive motels and attractions and presenting a new international destination to the world.208 As part of “the St. Joe Company West Bay Sector Plan” project, the airport plays a vital role in bringing visitors and creating business opportunities as well as jobs. The project is planned to include 71,000 acres for mixed land uses including commercial, industrial, residential, and recreation as well as a component for preservation. Thirty-nine thousand acres are slated to be a part of an environmental conservation program since West Bay is one of the most ecologically diverse and sensitive areas in the world.209 Many environmental groups fought construction of the airport and the project has been plagued with fines and legal battles over environmental issues such as storm water runoff.210 Venture Crossings Enterprise Centre is the frontrunner site that St. Joe is using to market to global businesses by touting it as a strategic location in the Americas with multi-modal transportation connections (land, sea, and air) and offering 1,000 acres and 4.4 million square feet of space for office, hotel, warehouse, manufacturing, and distribution.211 Of special interest is the aerospace industry as the Panhandle is home to seven naval and air force military installations and thousands of defense contractors, which provides a well-suited workforce.212 Ironically, the land areas for these installations have likely limited sprawl as Eglin and Tyndall Air Force Bases are large, unpopulated areas on the map next to large urban areas. Also on the website, St. Joe markets the area’s “quality of life” with information on recreational activities, healthcare, education, and, of course, the beautiful beaches and inviting climate.213
207 Nelson, “St. Joe Co. weathers…”; Scarlet Sims, “St. Joe to concentrate on airport, commercial,” Panama City News Herald, March 10, 2010. 208 Nelson, “St. Joe Co. weathers...”. 209 Venture Crossings, “About West Bay Project,” http://www.venturecrossingsfl.com/aboutwestbay.htm (accessed December 9, 2011). 210 Nelson, “St. Joe Co. weathers…”; Pat Kelly, “Airport hit with another fine,” Panama City News Herald, February 5, 2011; Pat Kelly, “Environmental groups to hold public forum on airport,” Panama City News Herald, February 17, 2010. 211 Venture Crossings, “About VentureCrossings,” http://www.venturecrossingsfl.com/index.htm (accessed December 9, 2011). 212 Venture Crossings, “Aerospace/Defense,” http://www.venturecrossingsfl.com/aerospace.htm (accessed December 30, 2011); Sims, “St. Joe to concentrate…”. 213 Venture Crossings, “Quality of Life,” http://www.venturecrossingsfl.com/qualityoflife.htm (accessed December 9, 2011). 65
However, some residents see these plans to be threatening to their quality of life and encroaching on the surrounding environment that is peaceful and so appealing. One such resident, Joanne Edmonds, who lives on a dirt road off County Road 388 near the airport site, expressed her concerns to the local newspaper. Bay County will soon relinquish the roadway to the State of Florida and as part of the West Bay Parkway Project, the Florida Department of Transportation will widen the road from two to four lanes. This will prove challenging as wetlands exist on both sides of the roadway and the widening will be around 80 feet. Project Manager Greg Garrett stated that this project was going to be a priority “to accommodate the expectation of increased traffic due to the new airport” and due care will be taken in minimizing and/or avoiding impacts to the wetlands and endangered species in the area. In addition, permits will have to be submitted to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection as well as plans that will comply with the National Environmental Policy Act. Edmonds’ home borders the wetlands on the north side, providing calming scenery, but she worries that there is no way the project, planned for construction in the next five years, will be completed without affecting at least some of the wetlands and possibly her quality of life and the community she has grown to love. She lamented, “My only sadness is about the community; when I found this place, the house didn’t matter. It was utterly tranquil and beautifully quiet.”214 While the airport is a part of St. Joe’s plan for bringing exponential economic growth to the Panhandle, only time will tell if St. Joe is a “saint” or a “sinner” when it comes to what is best for Northwest Florida. Many rural residents are resistant to this type of development out of the fear of congestion, overcrowding, and the strain on resources that have plagued South Florida for years. Rebecca Wiser, a cashier at the Quail Hollow General Store in neighboring Washington County, says she left The Villages in Central Florida to escape the development there that caters to the retired generation. Nevertheless, since 2008, developer Florida Landings, LLC has been trying to get approval to create a retirement community restricted to residents over age 55 called “Rhythm” on a 1,883-acre parcel that would include some 3,200 new housing units as well as office and retail space. However, most of the residents in the Quail Hollow/Sunny Hills area oppose the plans that they feel would disturb their tranquil corner of the world and diminish the
214 Tosha Sketo, “Signs of progress disturbing for airport neighbor,” Panama City News Herald, June 26, 2010. For more information on the West Bay Parkway Project, visit the Florida Department of Transportation website at http://westbayparkway.com; for Segments 1 and 2 (“Purpose and Need” and “Alternatives”) presentation slides, visit http://www.westbayparkway.com/presentation-segment1-meeting.cfm and http://www.westbayparkway.com/presentation-corridor-meeting-May-2010.cfm. 66
rural area’s privacy and quality of life. One resident said he likes the freedom of being able to shoot guns where no one will bother him. Many of the existing houses are built away from the road or have fenced property. Another concern is protection of the water supply as there are sensitive watersheds in the area and most of the county water supply is delivered through private wells.215 Water has been a controversial issue recently as Bay County attempted to drill test wells to serve as a backup for Deerpoint Lake, the main source of the area’s drinking water. However, Washington County was concerned that these large test wells might reduce the amount of water available to residents and decrease the area’s hundreds of lakes.216 Wakulla County has dealt with a similar water quality situation as the visibility and clarity of Wakulla Springs has fluctuated in recent decades which some attribute to spray fields in Leon County that affected the Wakulla watershed.217
Panhandle Assets: Environment, Rural Character, Agrarian Heritage Many of Florida’s creeks, bays, rivers, lakes, springs, and waterways have been a key part of the appeal for both residents and visitors to use for purposes of recreation, health, and a higher quality of life and the Panhandle is no exception. Many scientists and researchers consider this a distinctive area of Florida due to low population density, undeveloped land, and the presence of unique ecosystems and wildlife. Northwest Florida, along with its bordering states, Alabama and Georgia, has been deemed one of six areas in the United States to be the home of diverse and rare species. Among the important ecosystems present here is the largest remaining longleaf pine forest on the planet, located along the Florida/Georgia border. Also known as the Red Hills region, this 300,000 acre area is significant in its role as a recharge site for the Floridan aquifer, which provides drinking water for Floridians. Relative to this is the fact that Northwest Florida has the most streams in the state along with large rivers (Escambia, Choctawhatchee, and Apalachicola). Its bays are special as well, as St. Joseph Bay has had
215 Felicia Kitzmiller, “Near proposal site, some see promise, others intrusion,” Washington County News, February 1, 2012; Cecilia Spears, “Rhythm backers hope for harmony,” Washington County News, February 1, 2012. 216 Matt de Nesnera, “Environmentalists Concerned over Bay County’s Water Well Drilling,” Wjhg.com, April 15, 2010, http://www.wjhg.com/home/headlines/90989259.html (accessed February 5, 2013). 217 Jennifer Portman, “Problem: Spray field,” Tallahassee Democrat, June 18, 2006, http://www.tallahassee.com/article/20060619/NEWS01/606190308/Problem-Spray-field (accessed February 5, 2013). Also see the report “Degradation of Water Quality at Wakulla Springs, Florida: Assessment and Recommendations,” published in December 2005, at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection website at http://www.dep.state.fl.us/geology/programs/hydrogeology/hydro_wkshp/WakullaPeerReportFinal.pdf. 67
record numbers of invertebrates, crabs, scallops, and conchs in the Gulf of Mexico. To the west, Panama City lays claim to a crayfish solely found in and around the city between St. Andrews Bay and Callaway Creek with an estimated limited range of 51 square miles and listed as an imperiled species. In 2002, there were only 26 known habitat sites for the crayfish, many of these in urban roadside ditches that were threatened by development and researchers felt it was likely that the population was destined for a 50-80% reduction in the next decade. However, timberlands owned by the St. Joe Company have been found to hold some 800 crayfish sites, which would seem more promising as the habitat range expanded, but proposals for new roadways have the potential to impact this habitat.218 Further upstream in freshwater territory, the Blackmouth shiner (Notropis melanostomus) has been found in limited sites only in the Blackwater, Yellow, and Shoal Rivers in Florida as well as a couple of creeks and rivers in Alabama and Mississippi. This fish is listed as threatened by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, citing its short life span and temporary nature of its habitat; the encroachment of people is listed as a concern and diminishing water quality from elevated nutrients has already been shown in sub-watersheds where the shiners were found. According to the FWC report, “the Pond Creek drainage and Shoal River drainage are being impacted by the rapid urbanization of Northwest Florida [and] some of the Florida range is in publically-held conservation lands, but most of the range is in developable areas.219 Also on the threatened list is the Okaloosa darter (Etheostoma okaloosae), which is found mostly on Eglin Air Force Base but also in creeks as part of the Choctawhatchee Bay system.220 In addition, the ivory-billed woodpecker, affectionately called the Lord God Bird and believed to have been extinct for years, is believed by some to be surviving along the Choctawhatchee River. Although no conclusive photographs have been taken, a team of researchers claim sightings and sound recordings of the bird along with nesting holes and marks
218 1000 Friends of Florida, “Saving Special Places: A Citizen’s Guide to Protecting Natural Resources in Florida’s Panhandle,” (2004): 3, http://www.1000friendsofflorida.org/saving-special-places/florida-panhandle/ (accessed December 21, 2012); Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, “Biological Status Report Panama City Crayfish, (Procambarus econfinae),” April 19, 2006, 6-9, http://myfwc.com/media/1355347/PCC_BSR.pdf (accessed March 11, 2013). 219 Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, “Blackmouth Shiner Biological Status Review Report,” March 31, 2011, 3, http://myfwc.com/media/2273265/Blackmouth-Shiner-BSR.pdf (accessed March 11, 2013). 220 Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, “Okaloosa darter,” http://myfwc.com/wildlifehabitats/imperiled/profiles/fish/okaloosa-darter/ (accessed March 11, 2013). 68
on trees as they spent months camping near the river around Ponce de Leon, a small town in western Holmes County. Researcher and Auburn University Professor Geoffrey Hill expressed his whole-hearted belief that the bird inhabits the area, but also thinks the bird’s secretive nature has prevented anyone from getting the much sought after photo.221 When he released a journal publication in 2006 about his findings, he expected controversy in the bird world, but never imagined he would be caught up in the politics of the $300 million relocation of the nearby Panama City-Bay County Airport and the St. Joe Company’s development plans. Hill, accused of a grand conspiracy to stop the plans, stated, “Honest to God, I had no knowledge of this. Until yesterday, I was living in an academic world…I was just obsessed with finding evidence that this bird still existed.”222 It is obvious to see, therefore, that the ecosystems and wildlife of the rural Panhandle need to be protected and preserved for residents today and future generations. Negative environmental impacts of development have already been documented in other areas and naturally it can be theorized that those same effects could be expected. If tree canopy and vegetation is decreased, temperatures could rise, especially if buildings and parking lots, which produce additional heat, are part of the development. Air quality may also be diminished as trees filter pollutants with their leaves. With additional cars on the road, vehicle exhaust will only compound this problem. Water runoff will increase as trees and vegetation that were once present will no longer be available to soften the impact of rain, making the soil hard and inhibiting absorption into the ground. Again, concrete will contribute to this along with a decrease in the quality of water entering creeks, streams, and rivers.223 Water runoff leads to increased pollution of water sources, soil erosion, flooding, lessened recharge into aquifers, and poorer quality drinking water. Consumption of open spaces brings loss of green space, wetlands, recreation areas, and natural habitats for native species.224 If widespread development occurs in the region, it should be expected that large, natural areas of animal habitat will be broken into smaller, disconnected pieces of land, which may then be cleared and fenced, drastically reducing
221 Susan Milius, “Ivory-billed hopes flit to Florida,” Science News 170, no. 18 (Oct. 28, 2006): 285; Kevin Spear, “The Elvis of the Swamps,” The Orlando Sentinel, April 8, 2007, Section A: A1. 222 Fred Grimm, “Rare Woodpecker Gets the Bird from Developers,” The Miami Herald, September 28, 2006, Metro & State: 1B. 223 Melvin P. Garber, “Natural Resource Conservation: Environmental Impact of Commercial Development,” The University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, http://pubs.caes.uga.edu/caespubs/horticulture/resource-conservation1.htm (accessed July 30, 2007). 224 Heimlich and Anderson, “Development at the Urban Fringe and Beyond,” 32. 69
places for these animals to live. One can only conclude that this will have a detrimental effect on freshwater species and the animals that call the Panhandle home, thus altering the unique ecological qualities of this Last Frontier. Many historians have documented the disastrous encroachment on the environment created by man and his unquenchable thirst for development in South Florida. The most obvious example is the draining of the Everglades, which developers felt should be used for more important ventures such as agriculture or real estate. This began as early as 1906, and was imminently started by Governor Napoleon Bonaparte Broward under the pretense that “water will run downhill.”225 His idea was that this land could be used as homesteads for farmers, and it is ironic that this environmental haven in South Florida was surrendered to appease the demands of those Floridians to the north and was proposed to connect the different sections of the state, which were “totally dissimilar in pursuits, interests, and habits.”226 Operations would be funded by sale of the “reclaimed” land and real estate taxes within the drainage district. The biggest investor, a land developer (and con artist), Richard J. Bolles, entered the scene with the idea of selling land in divided tracts, with thousands of farms under twenty acres, a few hundred ranging from 40-80 acres, and a small handful of 160-640 acre plots. The sales pitch included a lottery where buyers would pay $240/ten-acre plot and after all plots were sold, a drawing was to determine size and location for each individual land owner’s interests. Despite the fact that the land had not been surveyed or drained, the scheme was successful as many Northerners bought the land “sight unseen” and thousands of these so-called farms were sold by 1911. The drawing itself brought things to a halt, however, as buyers came to visit and found the land they had purchased still under water and could not be certain of their property without proper survey. Furious, many insisted Bolles refund their money, but he instead turned the blame to the State for not draining the land as promised. Without much recourse, many could only stop their payments, which affected any further work as these landowners would certainly not be paying any drainage taxes.227 A newspaper expose increased awareness of the deception in October 1911, and some buyers even brought a civil suit against Bolles to void the contracts. Millions of snakes, ants,
225 David McCally, “The Everglades and the Florida Dream,” in Paradise Lost? The Environmental History of Florida, ed. Jack E. Davis and Raymond Arsenault (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005), 144; Derr, Some Kind of Paradise, 157. 226 Derr, Some Kind of Paradise, 157. 227 McCally, “The Everglades and the Florida Dream,” 144-5. 70
frogs, and insects made settling the area very “unsettling,” and Bolles agreed to suspend collection until improvements were made at his expense. Others were indicted on criminal charges for mail fraud, knowingly marketing and selling land unfit for agriculture, and were convicted and sentenced to jail, but virtually none served any time.228 Unheeded by prior failure and a previous study filled with errors and plagued with conspiracy and greed, people still wanted to develop this region for a profit, and in mid-1912, the Everglades Land Sales Company hired nationally renowned engineers in the field of drainage to take a look at what had already been done and what improvements could be made. These engineers actually saw the potential for disaster as dried organic soils were certainly volatile and flammable which would kill any chance for using the fertile soil promised for agricultural use. Bacteria were a threat to the soil as well, and unless the land was quickly sold and farmed after draining, the marshlands would turn to jungle. Thus, the engineers advised a slower, controlled development, but this did not meet the fancy of Florida legislators’ political aspirations. They hired a new group to do a new study, hoping that this report would boost interest and promise once again in the possibility of agriculture and progress in the Everglades, and it did. With the draining of the land came the peril predicted by the previous group and the soil began to disappear. Small farmers and those with the dreams of farming gave way to the corporations who could afford the special tractors and equipment needed to work in the dampened mess and the means to irrigate the drier sections.229 Despite the drainage disaster and its harmful effects on the Everglades, the state thought it a good idea in 1916 to build the Tamiami Trail, a $13-million roadway project from Miami across the marshy lands to the Gulf, and then north to meet Tampa. This wreaked havoc on the region’s wildlife, making scattered road kill an everyday occurrence. Fortunately, ideas for natural preservation began around this same time. By 1922, nearly 4,000 acres were a part of Royal Palm State Park within the Everglades, and influential Floridians began the push for a national park, which would not be dedicated until 1947. A new plan in this same year divided the Everglades into three separate zones: an agricultural area, three water conservation areas, and the national park, where wild land and animals could be protected. Rapid population growth in South Florida during the 1970s brought the issue of water conservation to the table. The
228 Derr, Some Kind of Paradise, 161-3. 229 McCally, “The Everglades and the Florida Dream,” 146-152; Derr, Some Kind of Paradise, 163. 71
1980s and 1990s brought discussion of restoring the Everglades to its pre-drainage state under the title of The Comprehensive Review Study, imploring attorneys and scientists alike to consider the options. The plan’s description seems too complicated for the person not versed in a science- based or engineering education. There are three main proposals for restoration, which include water flow and movement, removal of one-third of dikes and levees, elevation of a portion of the Tamiami Trail, and marshland creation as a sort of filtration system. However, historians and environmentalists alike are skeptical as they question how much of this so-called “restoration” is aimed more at sustaining the usefulness and profitability of the current Everglades rather than returning its fauna to its original state and a suitable habitat for the wild inhabitants. The existing review study has yet to address how to return the once vibrant eco-system of the Everglades and some argue that this should serve as a case study if Americans want to live in a healthy environment.230 While the Everglades’ destruction has been an environmental disturbance to nature and wildlife, development has also affected the quality of life of Floridians and their communities, particularly in the central and southern portions of the state. Nature and travel writer Bill Belleville offers his perspective of development encroaching on his Cracker-style home in Sanford in his book, Losing It All to Sprawl: How Progress Ate My Cracker Landscape. Bellville discusses the quaint surroundings and neighbors on Sewell Road just off of State Road 46 that he stumbled upon fifteen years ago and has grown to love. He vividly describes the natural surroundings in this part of Florida that make it special and allows the reader the opportunity of an intimate knowledge of those who lived in the community and the land as well as the “self-reliant live-and-let-live spirit” that he appreciates. He often poignantly quotes from Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ Cross Creek and notes her judgment that land is not owned, but really “belongs to the wind, to the sun” and that “we are tenants and not possessors.”231 He is angry and sad as development draws nearer to his home – a mall is being built in the vicinity and apartment complexes creep up on all sides. Realtors call his house asking him if they can come “walk” his property. “All of Florida is for sale,” one realtor tells him. He resisted initially, but eventually conceded to the developers as everyone else had in the neighborhood. He is concerned with endangered species such as the gopher tortoise and relays that while they
230 Derr, Some Kind of Paradise, 163-6; McCally, “The Everglades and the Florida Dream,” 152-7. 231 Bellville, Losing It All to Sprawl, 31, 63. 72
were once a subsistence food for Crackers and the Native Indians, they are more in danger now as their habitat is disappearing from development. The Wekiva River and springs are also dear to him in addition to the many other water sources and he points out the lack of concern by leaders over the water quality and quantity. He reveals that a committee of affluent developers, agricultural bosses, and sugar growers advised then-Governor Jeb Bush that the state had more of a water-delivery problem and that the state should use conservation funds like Florida Forever to build huge pipelines to pump the water from North Florida (where there is plenty of it and “rural and less prosperous…[with] little political clout”) to water-poor South Florida. He also discusses how State Road 46 was widened with more lanes and a grassy median and large auto dealerships have located there with searchlights that cause light pollution. As the stars have become harder to see in the night sky, Bellville facetiously pokes fun at the dealerships, joking “as if some wayward space traveler driven by the desire to consume will ride a beam down…, trade in their extraterrestrial vehicle, and find themselves in a spanking new SUV with a sixty- month loan at 0 percent interest.”232 The various developments that are encroaching on his home have cut down trees and created temporary, broad open spaces. A homeless woman he had met previously in the woods dies after being arrested for having an open container in the city limits; she was sitting under a shade tree at the mall eating a hot dog and drinking a beer. He writes, “the merchants who pay large square-footage rents on the old cow pasture that is now a mall have assumed a territoriality in which perfectly coifed landscapes cannot be marred by the blight of the homeless” and furthermore that “sprawl is exclusionary, no room for anomalies that may interfere with the relentless urge to consume.”233 He relates John Keasler’s 1958 novel, Surrounded on Three Sides, as “one of the first modern laments about the deceptive illusion of progress in Florida’s runaway growth” and uses quotes from the characters who ask, “What the hell is Florida for if you can’t sleep in it?” and exclaim, “To Hell with progress.”234 He includes the memories of his friends who recall their “old home place” on Sewell Road and an older lady who lived in his house as a girl finds him through the newspaper, which enables him to gain an even better connection to the place as she shows him pictures of her family and how the house and land used to look. The memories are moving and heartbreaking as
232 Ibid., 81, 171, 64. 233 Ibid., 66, 181. 234 Ibid., 181. 73
one of the residents shares how his parents had been there since the 1930s and everyone knew everyone else but that is no more. One neighbor and friend, Mark, he says, “is a southerner, true and unreconstructed, and proud, every bit as much relic as this little neighborhood…an identity where good manners and respect count for a lot.” With this, he relates a Vanderbilt University study that found “regional self-identity in the South was gradually eroding thanks to urbanization, which is a form of sprawl” and that “the number of people who are fiercely proud to be called southerners was being noticeably diluted by newcomers” and had dropped from 78 to 70 percent from 1991 to 2001.235 Further, he quotes Douglas E. Morris’ It’s a Sprawl World After All where he argues, “Sprawl isolates people in their own homes…turning America into a society of strangers. [And] because no one knows anyone else, it has helped to create a culture of incivility.”236 He likes his veterinarian and his dentist, each of which he says is “genuine…and is country enough to slow down and to enjoy his life,” but he fears sprawl will likely take them, too, and the new residents of the big developments “likely will not even know what they have missed.”237 It seems that Bellville is continuously troubled by the severing of community and character by development throughout the work. One has to wonder if he is not only telling his story but also trying to warn his neighbors to the north. The freedom and laid-back lifestyle that Bellville held with such high esteem have been a part of the rural character of the small communities and towns of the Panhandle, lingering from earlier generations of countryside pioneers. Farming has been a way of life for many of these families as well as cattle-raising, and the land has often been passed down with the expectation that it will continue to stay in the family and be used “as the Good Lord intended.” Some historians have argued that rural Southerners have viewed farming as “a way of life and as a social organization for perpetuating worthwhile values,” and that while these values may not be defined, per se, they represent “importance of household independence, family cohesion, community sharing and cooperation, and the virtue of working the land.”238 Following the Depression, the “Back to the Land Movement” gained momentum as intellectuals offered agrarian solutions to the problems that America had experienced economically and socially. This revived Jeffersonian ideologies and encouraged both local food production as well as
235 Ibid., 85-6, 98. 236 Ibid., 98. 237 Ibid., 170. 238 Winters, “Agriculture in the Post-World War II South,” 26. 74
household independence to reduce “wasteful mass consumerism” according to one of the movement’s supporters, Ralph Borsodi. As one of the intellectuals who formed the Southern Agrarians at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and an author of an essay in I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition, John Crowe Ransom warned readers in 1930 about large Southern plantations being broken down into smaller farms after the Civil War and yielding “less and less of a living.”239 He prophesied that these would never yield a good living until they were large units again, but it would be “industrial units, controlled by a board of directors or an executive…manned not by farmers living at home, but by ‘labor’.”240 Almost seventy years later, Donald Winters confirms this prophecy, examining the advances in agriculture and the effect on the size of farms, where farmers are forced to turn to large-scale operations to be profitable. For example, the average size of a farm in the Rural South was a mere 130 acres in 1945; by 1992, the average had tripled to 390 acres.241 Furthermore, Ransom romanticizes a farmer’s philosophy and identifying himself with the land, saying that “a man can contemplate and explore, respect and love, an object as substantial as a farm or a native province. But he cannot contemplate nor explore, respect nor love…a pile of money, a volume of produce, a market, or a credit system.”242 While some of his ranting seems contradictory at times, his message is clear that land should not be divided and the corporations and their executives cannot love the land as a man who works it himself, worries about it, and holds the soil in his hands. Winters again confirms Ransom by looking at the consequence of corporate involvement on farms, starting with financial investment all the way through marketing and administrative decisions. This became known as “agribusiness” and farmers lost the independence they were accustomed to and were more like employees, having their decision- making handed to them by management.243 However, agriculture in Florida has been on the decline in the last 30-40 years as development and sprawl trends continue. Already it has been reported that statewide agricultural acreage decreased from 10.6 million in 1997 to 10.3 million in 2002, while actual number of
239 Stuart Keith Patterson, “Back-to-the-Land Movement,” Encyclopedia of the Great Depression, ed. Robert S. McElvaine, 1 (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004), 85-6; John Crowe Ransom, “Reconstructed but Unregenerate,” in I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006, 1930), 18. 240 Ransom, “Reconstructed but Unregenerate,” 18. 241 Winters, “Agriculture in the Post-World War II South,” 23. 242 Ransom, “Reconstructed but Unregenerate,” 20. 243 Winters, “Agriculture in the Post-World War II South,” 24. 75
farms dropped from 45,808 to 44,078, and future estimates for loss of Florida farmland are even bleaker. One researcher predicts a loss of some 2.8 million acres of agricultural land, along with forests, to suburbs by 2020.244 In the Florida 2060 report commissioned by 1000 Friends of Florida, researchers from the University of Florida’s GeoPlan Center indicate that nearly 7 million acres of agricultural and native land will be needed to accommodate projected population growth and will be lost to urban use in the next fifty years.245 Rumored plans for development along with the astronomical housing market caused real estate values for farmland to soar in the recent decade. In a 2005 Florida Land Value Survey by the University of Florida, it was reported for the Northwest region that the price of farm woods had risen from an averaged $1,464 per acre in 2004 to $2,700 per acre in just one year and improved land had gone from $1,783 per acre to $3,337 per acre, resulting in a 84.4% and 87.2% increase, respectively (amongst the highest percentages in the state).246 However, it is evident that the real estate boom in 2006 drove some prices for agricultural and forested land to at least $7,000-$11,000 per acre in two of the Panhandle’s agricultural counties, Holmes and Jackson.247 The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports a 200% increase in nationwide farmland values between 1987 and 2006, and lists Florida among the states with the most expensive farmland.248 A two-hundred acre parcel once farmed by a local family located in northeast Holmes County was listed at $2.4 million in 2006. With no buyers, the price dropped, the timber was harvested and sold, and the last listing price before it was removed from the real estate market in mid-2010 was $700,000, with rumors floating around that the owners would take an offer of $500k if proposed. While the land is coveted for its rare, large and still connected parcel opportunity, not
244 Susan Salisbury, “Farmland’s Urbanization Expected to Continue in Palm Beach County, Florida,” Palm Beach Post, March 20, 2004. 245 Paul D. Zwick and Margaret H. Carr, “Florida 2060: A Population Distribution Scenario for the State of Florida,” (a research project prepared by the GeoPlan Center at the University of Florida for 1000 Friends of Florida, August 15, 2006), 2, http://www.1000friendsofflorida.org/connecting-people/florida-smart-growth-advocates-2/ (accessed March 15, 2013). 246 John E. Reynolds and Rodney L. Clouser, “Strong Nonagricultural Demand Keeps Agricultural Land Values Increasing,” University of Florida, Food and Resource Economics Department, Florida Cooperative Extension Service, January 2006, http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fe625 (accessed March 15, 2013). This information was referenced in The Trust for Public Land’s “Surging Land and Housing Prices,” but is currently inaccessible. 247 See the Property Appraiser website for each county for Sales Search information (www.qpublic.net/holmes and www.qpublic.net/jackson). Examples: Parcel 0511.00-000-000-018.000 in Holmes County, 35.02 acres of Pastureland (Property Use Category) sold in July 2006 for $266,400 or $7607/acre; Parcel 07-2N-11-0000-0020- 0000 in Jackson County, 40 acres of Timberland (Property Use Category) sold in April 2006 for $475,000 or $11,875/acre. 248 Maya Roney, “Green Acres: Farmland is More Expensive Than Ever Before Thanks to a Hunger for Ethanol and Simpler Living,” Business Week Online, April 11, 2007. 76
many locals have that much disposable income to invest. The economic recession has caused property values to decrease, but on the surface locals know prices are still above the average price from before the real estate boom in the last few years. Rural farming communities in South Florida have shown evidence of the pressures of developers eager to buy their farmland. In Davie, a small town in Broward County, a council member commented that “if you are working hard and someone comes to you and offers a pot of gold for your land, it’s very tempting.”249 Some speculate that St. Joe’s “New Ruralism” would only escalate land values with sprawl as Northwest Florida could see suburbs spill from major metropolitan areas similar to Orlando, Tampa, Miami, and Jacksonville. When these land values go higher, it is typically unaffordable for locals to buy the land they have lived around for years and buyers will most likely be newcomers looking for a small piece of the rural lifestyle. 250 While Southern hospitality is still alive and well here, farmers who have long tended to the land may feel some anxiety and not necessarily greet these novices with a loan of their tractors. Ron Macher, editor of Small Farm Today magazine, hates the term ‘hobby farm’ and says, “If you haven’t been devoting your full time to farming, you aren’t going to know how.”251 To entice new buyers, St. Joe has “farmhands” to show its WhiteFence Farms residents how to “farm.”252 While the current economy has slowed down these corporate plans, development will likely continue when the financial arena is better once again. Farming is not the only way to make a living that is threatened by development in Northwest Florida as “The Forgotten Coast” along the inner rural coastal counties such as Gulf and Franklin has also been discovered. Generations of fisherman have already been affected and many have sold out and left the area. High-rise condominiums have taken the place of the shrimp boat fueling stations. Locals recall a time when anyone, rich or poor, had full access to ocean views and a profitable living could be made from the Gulf waters. Families such as the Millenders of Carrabelle in Franklin County had enjoyed fifty years in the seafood industry, but sold their marina in 2003 under pressure for their waterfront property. Other residents resent being called ‘the Forgotten Coast’ because they realize their land is certainly not “forgotten”
249 William Plasencia, “Out With the Old West: As Owners of Groves and Horse Ranches in Davie Fend Off Developers, Town Officials Work for Balanced Growth,” Miami Daily Business Review, July 10, 2003, AA2: 3. 250 Emily Stratton, “New Ruralism,” University of Georgia Land Use Clinic, (Fall 2009): 4, http://www.law.uga.edu/landuseclinic/research/ruralism_2009.pdf (accessed March 15, 2013). 251 Alan J. Heavens, “A ‘New Ruralism’ Driven by Boomers,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, August 28, 2005. 252 Goodnough, “In Florida…”. 77
when it comes to development. Some even sued the county for accepting plans from St. Joe to build five new, up-scale residential developments, including a SummerCamp. Van Lewis, a clam digger, comes from a pioneer family who came to St. Teresa not long after the Civil War. He criticized St. Joe, saying, “They are destroying it in a generation…all they can see is dollars.”253 A long-time Panacea resident, Jack Rudloe, who is in charge of the Gulf Specimen Marine Lab, claims that the biodiversity of coastal waters has already been hurt by development. This, along with the disappearing fisherman and native shopkeepers being pushed out of business, has taken away from the rural coastal character that once made it a lively and enjoyable place to be.254 David McLain recalls spending time in 1940s Florida with his grandfather and says the closest thing left today of the Old Florida is the Florida Panhandle and Franklin County. He remembered it having “a real sense of community…being in touch with nature…having respect for the [water] world…having respect for swamps.”255 While not everyone can relate to the life of a farmer or a fisherman, many Panhandle residents do enjoy various recreational activities that this special area provides. The beautiful creeks, rivers, and bays offer untold opportunities for fishing, boating, swimming, tubing, canoeing, and kayaking. Large tracts of timbered forests and woods are prime areas for wildlife management and hunting, a popular tradition among rural Southerners, as well as camping and hiking trails. Development could mean clearing the land for more residential and commercial use or restricted access to these free spaces.256 Thus, the only people who will be enjoying the recreational activities of these parts of the Panhandle are those who have paid a premium to buy into this “New Ruralism.” The region’s history and people of its past are also a valuable part of what the land represents. There are numerous historical societies in the region working to preserve landmarks, but progress is often slow and limited. Some residents of the Panhandle have had the foresight and initiative to push for certain places or structures to be officially recognized as historically significant. In 2000, descendants of William Thomas Keith, a nineteenth century pioneer homesteader in Holmes County, were instrumental in having a cabin built in 1886 by Keith
253 Jennifer Portman, “Sun, Sand, and Lots of Change,” Tallahassee Democrat, April 22, 2007, Our Evolving Coast section; Jennifer Portman, “St. Joe will Save Us or ‘Skin’ Us, Depending on Your Point of View,” Tallahassee Democrat, April 22, 2007, Our Evolving Coast section. 254 Portman, “Sun…”. 255 Bruce Ritchie, “Saving a Slice of Old Florida,” Tallahassee Democrat, April 22, 2007, Our Evolving Coast section. 256 1000 Friends of Florida, “Saving Special Places,” 6-7, 15. 78
placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The cabin is unique as an example of architectural style that is indicative of the Gulf States from eastern Texas to southern Georgia with its “front and rear porch formed by logs that extend beyond the main block of the house at each gable end to support the broad roof overhangs.”257 It also exhibits the lifestyle of remote settlement and subsistence farming by those who migrated to the area and homesteaded in the nineteenth century and still have descendants in the vicinity. It is a rarity for a rural structure of this age to still be in existence as many such homes have since been forgotten in ruins or destroyed to make “better” use of the site. Other places which have been marked as historical sites include the Moss Hill Church, built in 1857 in Washington County on an 1820s mission site, and the Chautauqua Brotherhood Hall in Walton County’s Defuniak Springs, constructed during the first decade of the twentieth century and the second Chautauqua in the nation. Both represent the area’s religious roots and the Chautauqua building exhibits a connection to secular education and the political, scientific, economic, and religious thought that had been gaining momentum on a national platform since the 1880s.258 Surprisingly, sometimes infrastructure projects can preserve historically significant structures that might otherwise have gone unrecognized. Such was the case with the Shipes- Holley House in New Hope, a small town in northwestern Washington County, when the Florida Department of Transportation conducted preliminary design and environmental study plans to widen State Road 79. The residential structure was built prior to 1900 by Tom Shipes and son, Nathan, on their Holmes Valley Road homestead south of New Hope and was moved to town adjacent to the state roadway in the 1940s. During this time, Daniel and Hettie Holley owned and resided in the home, and in 2007, it was found eligible to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places after a Cultural Resource Assessment Survey was completed by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO). Features that made the structure historically and culturally significant were the “pyramidal folk/vernacular style” and its “symmetrical façade with a symmetrical front entry, steeply pitched pyramidal roof and lapped pine siding.”259 In addition, the home was found to have “a high degree of architectural integrity and retains its historical appearance because nearly all exterior and interior
257 Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources, “Historical Markers,” http://www.flheritage.com/preservation/markers/list.cfm (accessed September 11, 2009). 258 Ibid. 259 Rebecca Spain Schwarz, AIA, of Atkins Global Consultants, e-mail to Amanda Marshall, Florida Department of Transportation, October 2011. 79
fabric is intact after more than a century,” including the wood windows, exterior horizontal board siding, interior walls, and flooring.260 The original structure was 34 feet by 34 feet with six rooms, and in the 1960s, an indoor bathroom was added with the enclosure of a rear porch. In 2010, a consultation was held between FHWA, SHPO, FDOT, Washington County, the Washington County Historical Society, and the current owner of the home who had been deeded the property by her grandparents, the Holleys, in the 1980s. An agreement was reached where a documented relocation plan was developed by FDOT and Washington County agreed to be the recipient and provided the relocation site at Daniels Lake Park pending approval of the relocation plan per FHWA and SHPO. The house moving process was documented in step-by-step detail with photos from the existing site to the new location in late summer 2011 and the house is now part of a proposed rural village museum area.261 An adjacent widening project continues to the north through the town center of Vernon, however, where there are also structures not eligible to be placed on the National Register, but that still have historical significance to residents and the community and hold sentimental value in the hearts of those who grew up here. Mattie Birge lived in Vernon as a child, moved away, and then nearly twenty years ago returned to restore her childhood home where she and her sisters grew up. Her parents purchased the home from the man who performed their marriage ceremony. During an interview by a local news station, she heartbreakingly expressed, “You actually think of one day, you’ll…be able to sit in that same house and reminisce with your children when they’re grown and their children when they’re grown but you’re not able to do that.”262 She is not the only resident to feel the pains of “progress” as many question what the widening will do to the town. Even if the roadway has not taken their homes, it will be right out the front door of those just off its swath. With the main street businesses already closed up, residents worry that it will lose its small town feel. Other small towns in the South have seen this type of “progress” before. In 2000, Rob Amberg conducted a series of oral interviews with people in the small communities outside of Asheville, North Carolina, as a project for the Interstate 26 corridor was being constructed in the area by state and federal funding. Such projects had been in the works for years by the
260 Ibid. 261 Ibid. 262 Vanessa Nguyen, “Vernon Bridge Festival,” Wjhg.com, May 29, 2009. 80
Appalachian Regional Commission to make connections in the isolated regions of North Carolina and Tennessee.263 In his interviews, he speaks with a range of personalities to gain perspectives across the spectrum of how different residents felt about the project, life growing up in a rural area, farming, a sense of community and place, and economic troubles. In his interview with Taylor Barnhill, a Raleigh native who moved to the Mars Hill area in 1978, Amberg gives Barnhill the opportunity to freely discuss his youth growing up around his uncle’s farm and wanting to be a farmer and the reality that his uncle conveyed to him that he would need to either inherit a lot of land or be a millionaire to get into farming because no one could afford to buy the land. As early as the 1960s, large international companies were buying large acreage and agribusiness was getting started. So instead of farming, Barnhill attended a state university’s school of design, then onto city and regional planning, and eventually got a job working with the state in rural communities building healthcare centers. He was able to buy some property in Madison County and abruptly walked away from his office job one day to move there to begin organic farming. Barnhill says he “immediately learned of this sense of family and support and community cooperation because they were poor and they had to do that, but they found that was where their soul was also, and that was their source of love and community.”264 He also discusses how politics played into paving the roads which led to happy locals who could more easily commute to better jobs outside of town, but this caused everything to speed up, leading into consumerism where folks once depended on their neighbors for their goods and services but now went outside the community to spend money. According to Barnhill, this changed the traditional lifestyle and cost the community as people lost that sense of place and the connection to it. He is so impressed by the residents’ intimate knowledge of the land around which they lived, from where the springs are to finding herbs. His concerns extend onto the coming Interstate connector that he feels will be “the big cultural blender” of “the people and the activities into this homogenous soup that looks just like every other place in
263 Jerry Plemmons, interview by Rob Amberg, Documenting the American South, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), Oral Histories of the American South, Environmental Transformations in North Carolina, Interview K-0506, November 10, 2000. 264 Taylor Barnhill, interview by Rob Amberg, Documenting the American South, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), Oral Histories of the American South, Environmental Transformations in North Carolina, Interview K-0245, November 29, 2000. 81
North America and the world for that matter.”265 He questions why there are no tax incentives for people who stay at a place for generations and endure the poverty. Ironically, he worries about newcomers changing the dynamics of the community despite him being a non-native himself. Not only does he fear the social complications of the project, but he also mentions the environmental impacts and the biodiversity of the plant and animal species in this part of the Appalachian region and how the land being divided diminishes their habitat and range. In summary, Barnhill says he feels like he is “losing home” and he wants the perpetual change to stop but he feels it will continue.266
Figure 4-2 Shipes-Holley House prior to move and restoration (Photo courtesy of Amanda Marshall, Florida Department of Transportation)
265 Ibid. 266 Ibid. 82
Figure 4-3 Shipes-Holley House after move to park, prior to restoration (Photo courtesy of Amanda Marshall, Florida Department of Transportation)
Figure 4-4 Shipes-Holley House after move to park and restoration, Front (Photo courtesy of Amanda Marshall, Florida Department of Transportation) 83
Figure 4-5 Shipes-Holley House after move to park and restoration, Rear (Photo courtesy of Amanda Marshall, Florida Department of Transportation)
In another interview, Darhyl Boone expresses these same sentiments, but he is different as a native of Mars Hill and Madison County. At forty-five years old, he recalls his grandmother running a small community café seven days a week, raising hogs, growing beans, corn, and potatoes, which she used in the restaurant and to feed the family, both fresh and from what she had canned. He credits her with raising the grandchildren and that the café was a sort of hub for him and his cousins but also for the community as she wanted to make sure that people were fed even if she did not charge them. He reflects that the family was poor and barely surviving, but did not realize it at the time because that is how the general community lived and they felt fortunate to have clothing and something to eat. He can remember before the roads were paved and knowing not only everyone’s truck but “the sound of everybody’s truck,” but also how traffic gradually increased and residents simply adapted.267 He expresses concerns over the interstate affecting cultural traditions and values of the area. As newcomers move in, though
267 Darhyl Boone, interview by Rob Amberg, Documenting the American South, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), Oral Histories of the American South, Environmental Transformations in North Carolina, Interview K-0246, December 5, 2000. 84
they may be good people and like the lifestyle of the area, he feels they likely will not understand the cultural importance of these traditions and this gets lost even more as the elder natives die. In addition, he says not only does the interstate bring people in, but it allows people to go out and this changes “your relationship with your place because you’re not there as much.”268 Boone finished college in South Carolina and he and his wife decided they wanted to raise their children in the community he had grown up in around “people like [his] grandmother” and their values, beliefs, and faith, even if it meant sacrificing more money and material things. As a town official now, he sees growth as one of the area’s biggest challenges as well as infrastructure and water supply. He worries about farming’s decline in the area as young people are not farming and will eventually start selling the land which will then turn into subdivisions. He is also burdened with his job as he sees that individual freedoms that residents once had to do as they pleased on their property are sometimes restricted by ordinances. Boone and Amberg both agree that the irony of this growth is that the rural, country quality and remoteness that brings people into the area is what will essentially change it.269 Another interviewee and area native, Jerry Plemmons, who works for the local electric cooperative doing community development work, echoes much of the same sentiments as Darhyl Boone. He sees both advantages and disadvantages to road construction and development. He supports the interstate because he felt it was being made safer than the existing road where elderly residents had been killed as traffic increased and they were not accustomed to that kind of environment. He hopes for economic development, but sees that growth and land prices have already risen rapidly in the area of the interchanges and fears the displacement of native mountain people. He feels that the loss of some of the area’s K-12 schools have contributed to a loss of the community as residents are involved and identify with the activities of the schools. As he is a big supporter of community, he hopes that the area can find a balance in its use of outdoor recreation and tourism and protecting the natural environment that brings people to these areas and that newcomers and natives can look at what each group can teach the other and revive that sense of community and place.270 The small, rural communities and towns that make up Northwest Florida are comparatively similar to those documented in the North Carolina interviews and have a history
268 Ibid. 269 Ibid. 270 Plemmons, interview. 85
much like most small towns in the South. Rural Panhandle residents struggle to hold onto their cultures and traditions, their sense of place, and communities. Residents of Monticello in Jefferson County pride themselves on being the only county in the state that doesn’t have a traffic light.271 In Holmes County, the Northwest Florida Championship Rodeo is held the first weekend each October in Bonifay as local residents gather for the annual parade, camping, and rodeo activities. Begun in 1946 as a fundraising idea to celebrate the county’s agricultural and ranching heritage, the event used wild livestock captured by local men as Holmes County was a free range area at the time and the animals’ lack of contact with humans provided a more exciting show. Today, the rodeo is a local tradition that draws in thousands of visitors each year and area children continue to participate in school activities such as pancake breakfasts, pony rides, demonstration of barrel racing, roping wooden saw horses, and eating pork and beans from a can sitting in a circle like they are around a campfire telling cowboy stories.272 While agriculture is still a major part of the Panhandle’s economy, full-time farming is a rarer occupation for its residents anymore. Named Holmes County’s Farm Family of the Year in 2012, Ken Barton and his family run a 1,200-acre farm, raising livestock and cultivating various crops such as cotton, hay, oats, and peanuts, while also having full-time employment outside of the farm operations. Ken began farming with the father of his wife, Rhonda, in 1979 in the Bethlehem community. Since 2003, Ken downsized his own farming business to take the executive director position with the Florida Peanut Producers Association. His daughter, Tonya, and her husband, Kevin, also contribute to the Barton family farm, but Tonya is employed as an elementary school teacher and Kevin works as a field representative for a local livestock company. His son, Chad, is also a partner in the farming operation while also working full-time as an aircraft mechanic at Fort Rucker, a military base in neighboring Alabama.273 This transition into part-time farming has occurred all over the South and even full-time farmers have felt that the modernity of agriculture made it more of a business and less of an honorable way of
271 United Country Southern AgLands, http://www.monticellorealty.us/ (accessed November 4, 2012). 272 Nadine Long Hall, “Northwest Florida Championship Rodeo,” in The Heritage of Holmes County, Florida (Clanton, Alabama: Heritage Publishing Consultants, Inc., 2006), 136-7; Martha Riley (elementary teacher at Bethlehem School) in discussion with the author, December 6, 2007. 273 Cecilia Spears, “Bartons Named Holmes County Farm Family of the Year,” Holmes County Advertiser, November 16, 2012. 86
life.274 By comparison, rodeo promoters of the West have hoped that events might elicit the values of hard work, tenacity, and bravery that are associated with ranching.275 Just as in North Carolina, most of the younger generation of natives in rural Northwest Florida have foregone an agricultural way of living to commute to outside towns for jobs, and for some, the land has lost its meaning as it does not provide the subsistence and sense of community that it once did. While newcomers are certainly welcomed into the area, it is only reality that a community’s culture is modified with each new addition. While Southern hospitality is renowned and enjoyed by those outside of the South, there is often an arrogance and judgment by others toward Southern people, whether it be a ridicule of their Southern American English language or the seemingly “backwoods” and unrefined culture.276 The media often portrays Southerners in a negative stereotype, and admittedly it seems that some are easily exploited for the sheer entertainment of others. As Bellville highlighted in the Vanderbilt study, those who identify themselves as Southerners are on the decline. The character of our rural places have already evolved and been changed forever, but there is yet a sense of urgency to reflect and look for solutions as residents desperately try to hold onto their heritage, culture, language, and distinctiveness of the rural, agrarian lifestyle that still represents the worthwhile values and morals they wish to continue and pass along to future generations.
274 Winters, “Agriculture in the Post-World War II South,” 28. 275 Joan Burbick, Rodeo Queens and the American Dream (New York: PublicAffairs Books, 2002), 52. 276 For an interesting dialogue about Southern American English, visit http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/southern/sounds/ and also http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/southern/. 87
Figure 4-6 “Cowboy pushing a baby carriage through the corral-Bonifay, Florida,” 1949 (Courtesy of the State Library and Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/69655)
88
CHAPTER FIVE
MANAGING GROWTH: WORKING TO SAVE THE PANHANDLE’S RURAL PLACES AND QUALITY OF LIFE
During the 1970s, states such as Florida and Oregon began to realize there were severe consequences when land use was unregulated and became frontrunners in the movement to manage growth. These states had seen how development was scattered and unsystematic and natural habitats had been destroyed. There was little if any precedent to consult as private property had been virtually free of regulation with the exception of zoning and nuisance.277 Since 1924, states and municipalities had been extended the power to regulate with zoning through the Department of Commerce’s Standard State Zoning Enabling Act, followed by another in 1926, and two years later with the Standard City Planning Enabling Act of 1928. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the 1926 case of Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co. upheld that a government could exercise zoning as a constitutional power. At the time of the ruling, over 400 municipalities were using zoning, but it was still a relatively new and controversial concept as it limited a property owner’s rights and land use. The states could delegate land use decisions to local governments to “promote the health, safety and welfare of residents” along with the idea that local elected officials would be the best decision makers regarding land use in their communities. The baby boom post-World War II brought huge population increases, and by the 1970s, states like Florida saw the economic benefits as well as the obstacles in land development. Property owners and citizens expected special treatment and zoning was no longer sufficient in meeting the public needs of resource conservation and growth as the process became too highly political. Hybrid systems were then used that continued the tradition of local land-use decisions as long as state regulations and criteria were met.278 In 1972, Florida pioneered the statewide planning movement with a series of legislation, the first of which was enacted as the Florida Environmental Land and Water Management Act. Three years later came the Local Government Comprehensive Planning and Land Development Regulation Act of 1975. These acts were intended to provide environmental protection to critical
277 Robert P. Butts, “Private Property Rights in Florida: Is Legislation the Best Alternative?,” Journal of Land Use & Environmental Law (Spring 1997): 248. 278 Mary Dawson, “The Best Laid Plans: The Rise and Fall of Growth Management in Florida,” Journal of Land Use & Environmental Law (Spring 1996): 328-330. 89
areas, monitor developments of regional impact or DRI (considered large enough “because of its character, magnitude, or location…[to] have a substantial effect upon the health, safety, or welfare of citizens of more than one county”), and to encourage adoption of land use plans by local governments.279 Local governments were some of the staunchest opponents as they felt the state was invading their territory, but they resentfully passed local plans, usually under guidance of Regional Planning Councils, that were reviewed to ensure compliance with a regional plan as well as the State Comprehensive Plan. Still, local governments had control over land use in their communities unless it involved a DRI or area of critical state concern which could be appealed to the Florida Land and Water Adjudicatory Commission only by those directly involved in a particular project (the landowner or developer) or the state planning agency. Despite the fact that projects could affect the quality of life and land values in a community, area citizens or property or environmental groups could not appeal to the Commission. This complicated the process as it annoyed citizens and caused political turmoil. Project review times caused delays and higher costs for development. Controversial projects sometimes caused politicians to lose in the next election, but since the approval had been given, a development still proceeded. State and regional planners looked on mercilessly as local governments amended their plans “willy-nilly virtually every time a city council or county commission met.”280 As Florida’s growth reached an influx of 300,000 annually, the system’s failure to meet this growth was evident in the infrastructure and environment. In 1985, the Legislature passed the Growth Management Act and adopted the Comprehensive State Plan. Regional plans were to be implemented by regional planning councils and local governments were to adopt in-depth comprehensive plans by a 1992 deadline, all of which were to include consistency with the State’s plan. Locals were to establish levels of service for things like water, waste, conservation, open space, etc. and were obligated to supply the services upon approval of a development that would cause the necessity. The establishment of “concurrency” required that adequate facilities and services be present prior to any new development so that the impacts could be properly taken into consideration and there could be no delay in providing the necessary infrastructure and services. Local governments were also held accountable in keeping with the Act’s provisions as
279 Ibid., 331-2. 280 Ibid., 331-3. 90 state funds could be denied to those with plans not in compliance and affected citizens were given a bit more power to be able to challenge land use amendments and zoning decisions. The review for development was to be quicker and more reliable as well. However, while the state and various regions were given some oversight, local governments still retained the power to decide how much growth would be in store for their communities. This legislation was a historic step forward in growth management, creating a more healthy balance between local and state, removing the complications of political pressures for locals and allowing the opportunity for affected citizens to have a voice.281 Nevertheless, problems with the Act arose. Local governments were not given methodology to achieve the concurrency and the expense of comprehensive plans put a strain on limited monies and inexperienced personnel. Initially, half of the local plans received by the state were not compliant, but by the 1992 deadline, most of the 458 local governments had either adopted a comprehensive plan or were very close to it. Court rulings ensued that further complicated matters by providing more power to property owners seeking to change land use and provided more obstacles for individuals or citizen groups who might be affected in terms of preservation of community property values and quality of life. Local governments had essentially been stripped of their control as originally intended in the Act.282 In the following decade, bills regarding growth management were proposed annually, some passing and some failing with positive and negative effects. In 2000, one bill that was introduced (but failed) would have removed state planning supervision and replaced it with a local review council for each county (unfunded however); it also would have axed the DRI process, school concurrency, and converted public lands for private property ownership. The next year Governor Jeb Bush pushed for legislation that would calculate development costs before being approved and improve local planning for schools that would prevent overcrowding. Homebuilders fought against the latter provision which did not make the final cut, but $500,000 was apportioned to establish a “full cost accounting” model as a determination of community costs for any development. However, a year later the legislative session proved more productive in favor of growth management as Senate Bill 1906 required local government consideration of classroom space and water supply prior to new development authorization. Changes were also
281 Ibid., 333-6. 282 Ibid., 337-8, 344, 368. 91
made to speed up the development order process as well as dispute resolution and waived concurrency in certain cases for areas of urban infill and redevelopment. In 2005, school concurrency was mandated and the “proportionate fair share” option was handed to local governments to decide if they wanted to require developers to share the transportation infrastructure costs using adopted methodologies for mitigation.283 Throughout the end of the twentieth century, growth management advocates diligently worked on issues that were related to Florida’s growth such as affordable housing, agricultural land uses, rural land stewardship, conservation lands, development densities, coastal development, etc. One of the largest non-profit advocacy organizations, 1000 Friends of Florida, was formed in 1986 and has lead the charge in protecting Florida’s environment and precious natural resources. In 2000, the organization joined with other advocacy groups to form the Florida Forever Coalition to explore opportunities for improvements to the land acquisition program, Florida Forever, a 10-year, $300 million annual fund to buy and preserve/conserve property, which followed the previous program, Preservation 2000.284 In addition to its legislative lobbying activities, 1000 Friends of Florida also conducts research and publishes papers to educate the public about its efforts. In March 2009, the group published a collection of essays entitled, Why Florida Needs Smart Growth, composed by a diverse group of environmentalists, developers, planners, and elected officials. One author warned that the State faced losing up to 7 million acres of agricultural lands and natural habitat if current sprawl and development patterns continued for the next half century. Suggestions included affordable housing for homeowners that is nearby to employment, education, and shopping that allows less dependency on the automobile and more opportunities for biking and walking as well as public transportation. This includes providing open public spaces and recreational parks as well as rehabilitating historic buildings, which would create or enhance a community’s distinctiveness. Rural landowners should be encouraged to keep their lands in agriculture or forest to support reduction of greenhouse gases and protect the natural resources that provide water for Florida residents and allow for the rural places to keep their unique
283 Legislative summaries for each year were accessed from the 1000 Friends of Florida website on December 21, 2012 under Florida’s Growth Management Process, but have recently been removed. See www.1000friendsofflorida.org for more information. 284 Ibid.; see also Florida Forever Coalition at http://floridaforevercoalition.org/. 92
character as well. One author recommended waiving fees for development near employment and transit and increased fees for those on the sprawling fringe.285 Another author noted the three top elements of Florida’s economy to be development/growth, tourism, and agriculture. Growth came at the expense of the natural resources that Florida had to offer. There was a time when the population did not seem to matter and development often did not propose an obvious burden on the land. However, now that much of Florida’s developable coastal uplands has been built on, those looking to exploit it will admire the remaining undeveloped lands that are environmentally sensitive or more prone to flooding. Two suggested goals for growth management (seemingly common sense) include not developing lands unsuitable for development and setting up development with sufficient infrastructure. The use of conservation easements is another method to save rural lands that allows a landowner to transfer rights that permanently protect the land from development. While it is impossible to protect the State’s entire system of natural resources through public purchase, comprehensive plans can serve as a means for conservation by steering development away from these areas. Many of the essay’s authors noted the quality of life that countless Floridians treasure that could be diminished without the foresight of proper planning and growth management with a component of state oversight.286 However, it is likely that most of the writers were disappointed during the 2011 Legislative Session as growth management received a crippling blow when the State was virtually stripped of its authority regarding local government comprehensive plans and the concurrency requirement was relaxed where developers might not be held responsible for new development costs related to roads, schools, and other infrastructure. Some even called it the death of growth management as over 25 years of policy was suddenly reversed when Governor Rick Scott signed the bill in June. Scott had been forthcoming with his opinions and had pushed for the legislation that also disassembled the Department of Community Affairs, the State’s
285 Victoria Tschinkel, “Florida’s Second Chance for Sustainable Development,” in Why Florida Needs Smart Growth, 1000 Friends of Florida (March 2009), 4-5; Tim Hernandez, “Community Design and Our Quality of Life,” in Why Florida Needs Smart Growth, 1000 Friends of Florida (March 2009), 7. 286 James C. Nicholas, “Economics and Growth Management in Florida,” in Why Florida Needs Smart Growth, 1000 Friends of Florida (March 2009), 7-8; Jeff Danter, “How Smart Growth Protects the Environment,” in Why Florida Needs Smart Growth, 1000 Friends of Florida (March 2009), 9-10; Tom Lee, “Smart Growth—A Developer’s Perspective,” in Why Florida Needs Smart Growth, 1000 Friends of Florida (March 2009), 10-1; League of Women Voters, “Smart Growth and Our Quality of Life,” in Why Florida Needs Smart Growth, 1000 Friends of Florida (March 2009), 15. Available online at http://www.1000friendsofflorida.org/communications/special-reports/. 93
planning agency, which he had dubbed a “job killer,” and aimed to continue the “probusiness” agenda of bringing jobs to Florida. However, Florida’s quality of life was at the top of the list for those most concerned and many asked why businesses would want to move here if the quality of life is much lower in the future through unregulated development.287 Quality of life is at the forefront in the State Comprehensive Plan for Land Use under Florida Statute Title XIII, Chapter 187.201 (15) as the goal states: In recognition of the importance of preserving the natural resources and enhancing the quality of life of the state, development shall be directed to those areas which have in place, or have agreements to provide, the land and water resources, fiscal abilities, and service capacity to accommodate growth in an environmentally acceptable manner.288
The State’s quality of life was attributed to Chief Executive magazine’s ranking Florida third in the nation for being business-friendly as well as one of the top ten reasons to do business in Florida by Florida Trend. Even the Florida Chamber of Commerce, who supported the 2011 legislation to further limit growth management, lists it as a foundation for Florida’s future. While bringing more jobs appears to be the driving reason, it seems contradictory that over a million residential units and billions of square feet of commercial development were approved in the last several years with much of it still waiting to be built.289
Rural Conservation and Land-Use Planning It is certain that there are challenges when considering how to address the issues related to conserving rural areas and dealing with too much development. Since the peak of the nation’s farmland at 1,161 million acres in 1950 and later the revelation of its decline at approximately 6 million acres annually up to 1974, researchers have studied land-use and the possible fallout of the United States’ inability to provide food for its citizens. Many concerns, however, focus more on losing the valuable agricultural land, open space, and natural habitat for flora and fauna. Although urbanization has been blamed for this decline, it is difficult to measure this as different
287 Lloyd Dunkelberger, “Gov. Rick Scott reverses 25 years of growth management policy,” Herald-Tribune, June 3, 2011; Tampa Bay Times, “An obituary for Florida Growth Management,” Tampa Bay Times, Editorial section, June 3, 2011. 288 Available online at Online Sunshine at http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String=&URL=0100- 0199/0187/Sections/0187.201.html (last accessed March 13, 2013). 289 Charles Pattison, “To save quality of life, Floridians must act,” Tampa Bay Times, June 10, 2011. 94
methodologies exist for gathering data for land-use change. Counties cannot always provide accurate land-use patterns and categories, it is difficult to define a “hobby” farm or what is truly agricultural, and metropolitan counties have farming inside their boundaries and provide a substantial amount of food for the U.S. The urban fringe used in analyzing population and land- use is also sometimes blurred and not easily defined with boundaries. Aerial spatial data (or GIS) has been utilized in recent years as an analytical tool, and this technology can only further assist with research. However, property taxes can provide the best classification for land uses and since taxes are assessed locally, the county property appraiser has been slated as the best gatherer and informant for patterns and trends.290 Rural land-use planning and policy is essential when considering how to protect and manage Northwest Florida’s rural landscapes. However, this process can be complicated with so many variables involved. In the United States, land-use authority has historically been left up to local governments, but a smattering of policies are in place at the federal, state, regional, and county/city level that influence decision-making in land-use. In addition, different cultural traditions and values can exist in different regions on how property owners and residents view property rights.291 Many rural residents in North Florida adhere to the belief in “individual destiny” and fear outsiders trying to change or control their way of life, an attribute thought to be leftover from their Cracker heritage.292 In the 1970s, there seemed to be a “rural renaissance” nationwide where rural area growth surpassed urban for the first time in over a century. People find the rural-urban fringe (10 to 40 miles outside of major city centers) to be attractive because of open spaces, access to retail and employment, typically lower crime rates, property taxes, and real estate prices, and sometimes less racially diverse communities. However, in the last thirty years, this indiscriminate residential and commercial growth has also caused large amounts of productive farmland and natural forests to be fragmented and created an automobile dependent society that has no cares whether sufficient infrastructure is in place, if it does or does not create aesthetic appeal, or if a community is overwhelmed by newcomers. The NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) attitude is prevalent in the fringe as urban implants invade and threaten settled residents’ quality of life. According to rural experts in planning, there is even a migration
290 David M. Theobald, “Land-Use Dynamics beyond the American Urban Fringe,” Geographical Review 91, no. 3 (Jul., 2001): 544-5, 560. 291 David M. Theobald et al., “Ecological Support for Rural Land-Use Planning,” Ecological Applications 15, no. 6 (Dec., 2005): 1908. 292 Mizrach, “The North in the South,” 16. 95
amongst the rural poor as they look for an affordable place to live, which leads to “greater family instability, less continuity in educational and health services, and social rootlessness.”293 Federal policies designed to help rural America since the New Deal era have focused on farming and loan programs, assuming that the rural economy is solely based on farming. While this assistance was helpful when there were six million farms in the 1930s, the deficiency payments (calculated by a difference in market prices and a higher “determined” price) have had a tendency to be given to the largest producing farms (around 200,000), which likely would have been successful without the assistance.294 In the last decade, the United States Department of Agriculture has recognized that the rural economy has shifted to a service and retail base without discounting that agriculture is still very important in many rural areas. This has led to research and funding for rural development strategies that include infrastructure improvements, business assistance, education and training, and community development.295 According to experts in rural planning and development, rural towns are at risk as their economies move further into the service sector with a limited amount of customers to support specialty retail and service businesses in smaller towns.296 The economy of the Panhandle is much more diversified today than it was when agriculture dominated the region. While farming, forestry, and ranching are still a vital part of the area’s economy and continues to be a traditional living that residents have carried on for generations, it also includes the military installations such as Eglin and Tyndall Air Force Bases. According to a 1998 report, the military comprised 34% of the Panhandle economy and Eglin alone contributed over $2 billion to the State’s economy. Nature-based tourism (hunting, boating, fishing, swimming, etc.), commercial fishing and seafood harvesting, and a newer component, second homes for seasonal residents and retirees, are all substantial industries in Northwest Florida. In 2002, the population of the Panhandle had reached over 1.2 million with 2 out of 3 residents being natives; by 2030, the region’s population is estimated to be around 1.7 million. In fact, a few of the Panhandle counties grew 45 percent from 1990 to 1999. Thus, it has not been surprising that developers are continuously eyeing new opportunities in the nearly
293 Thomas L. Daniels and Mark B. Lapping, “The Two Rural Americas Need More, Not Less Planning,” Journal of the American Planning Association 62 (Summer 1996): 285-8. 294 Ibid. 295 United States Department of Agriculture, “Rural Development Policy, Main Components of Strategies,” http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/rural-development-policy/main-components-of- strategies.aspx (accessed November 30, 2012). 296 Daniels and Lapping, “The Two Rural Americas,” 285-8. 96
12,682 square miles and marketing the Panhandle with a fury, already creating issues with unplanned growth. 297 While the ideas of rural conservation and growth management in combating sprawl are nothing new, planners and concerned groups are constantly working to produce creative approaches and tweak successful methods including comprehensive plan amendments, conservation easements and transfer of development rights, downtown and main street revitalization, and placemaking as well as more controversial concepts. In recent years in the Panhandle, many counties have been forced to take a hard look at their comprehensive plans, especially those that had not been updated since the initial 1992 deadline under the Growth Management Act. In 2002, Franklin County, home of Apalachicola and approximately 11,000 residents, was one such county that was being considered for a large development by the St. Joe Company. The county worked with several groups and its residents through public meetings to gather recommendations about development, land use, and growth to rewrite the county’s comprehensive plan. In Jackson County, a small inland county with less than 50,000 residents, leaders began to recognize that their comprehensive plan was not up to the task as they were experiencing rural sprawl and had no zoning ordinances in place. Rather than simply adding zoning and amendments to the plan, county officials and staff wanted a vision for what residents wished for the county to look like in the future and the contracted consultant worked on this vision, named “Imagine Jackson.” The consultant mailed surveys to every household and held workshops and open houses as well as public meetings, and coordinators even arranged for transportation, child care, and food to ensure as much attendance as possible. Citizens crafted a vision statement: The people, businesses, organizations and governments of Jackson County are unified in their commitment to three cornerstones: livable communities, a healthy economy, and a high-quality environment. These cornerstones drive the decisions we make and the actions we take. They are the benchmarks by which we measure our progress.298
Three “action tracks”—physical and civic development, land use planning and management, and infrastructure and transportation—supported this vision statement, which was
297 1000 Friends of Florida, “Saving Special Places,” 4-6. 298 Ibid., 10-11, 13. 97
approved by vote of the county commission and the eleven municipalities. The following year the steering committee created a sustainable strategy for tourism and turned Imagine Jackson into a non-profit organization. Since then, Jackson County has partnered with neighboring counties, Holmes and Washington, to form and promote a tri-county team of tourist development councils marketing the region for day trip tourists to enjoy nature through farms, state parks, and cultural events. One important thing to note is often the lack of funding that can act as an obstacle to updating comprehensive plans. In Franklin County, this was accomplished with support from 1000 Friends of Florida, the Apalachee Conservancy, Apalachicola Bay and Riverkeeper, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and St. Joe, who all were stakeholders in the community. Jackson County, on the other hand, had a steering committee of stakeholders, including a school board member, a banker, a utility director, and an environmentalist, who raised private funds for the county planning division to utilize to further pursue grants and public funding.299 A huge step for local governments and regional planning agencies to tackle is identifying where development should occur and where it should not, particularly in environmentally sensitive areas that need protection. Urban growth boundaries need to be created, if not already, as this has proven successful in Oregon’s land use planning since the 1970s. Within the boundaries should be enough buildable lands to contain the development of the next 20 years or so and cities should not allow urban services such as water and sewer to exceed those borders.300 In the surrounding region of Portland, Oregon, urban and rural reserves were updated in 2010 and 2011 in concert with the Urban Growth Boundary, which Metro (the regional planning agency) manages to protect rural lands (farms and forests) and limit sprawl. The population inside the UGB is estimated to increase by 500,000-600,000 in the next 20 years and another 550,000-610,000 by 2060. The urban reserves are “lands currently outside the urban growth boundary that are suitable for accommodating urban development over the next 50 years” and rural reserves are “lands outside the current urban growth boundary that are high value working farms and forests or have important natural features like rivers, wetlands, buttes and floodplains.”301 Interestingly enough, the topography of the UGB surrounding Portland has
299 Ibid.; Also visit the Jackson County Tourist Development website at www.jacksoncountytdc.com. 300 Daniels and Lapping, “The Two Rural Americas,” 285-8. 301 Edward Sullivan and Carrie Richter, “Commentary: Once more unto the breach, dear friends,” Daily Journal of Commerce, Portland, October 7, 2009; Metro, “Urban Growth Boundary,” 98
elements such as steep terrain, rich farmlands, and natural resources that make it unfavorable for urban expansion.302 However, it is no secret that natural features such as wetlands did not discourage or halt development of the Everglades in South Florida in the early twentieth century. Ecologists, an underutilized resource in the past, need to be included in the planning discussion as a wealthy knowledge base for how development and land-use change can affect rural areas. Excellent ecological questions posed by researchers include: 1) How close can houses (or a road) be built near a lake or riparian area without adverse effects? 2) If we change land use at a given location, will populations of species X decline, and should we be concerned about that decline? 3) Where is habitat for Federal/State Threatened and Endangered listed species? Under what land use in the region is the habitat likely to be compromised? 4) Given that landowners have different goals for their lands, what opportunities exist to match landowner goals with biodiversity goals? 5) Where are high-priority areas of habitat? Where are locations that would be suitable for restoration or improvement as part of mitigation? 6) What areas are most ecologically unique within our jurisdiction (e.g., county, city, state, etc.)? 7) What habitat types are rare regionally and therefore need protection? 8) Are there particular places and land cover types that are important to maintain landscape connectivity? 9) What are the long-term effects of modification of natural ecological processes (e.g., fire suppression in southwestern US ponderosa pine forests, health of riparian ecosystems due to alteration of hydrologic flow regime, increased proportion of impervious land cover)? 10) Do particular land-use changes increase the risk of loss to human settlements and natural resources as a result of natural disturbances or climate change (e.g., flooding and fire)?303
After identifying which areas are appropriate for development and which areas need protection, local governments can work to acquire sensitive lands, or use one of several methods that might include a transfer of development rights (TDR), a conservation easement, or purchase of development rights (PDR). Over a decade ago, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection was able to purchase 37,000 acres that had been privately owned in the middle of
http://www.oregonmetro.gov/index.cfm/go/by.web/id=277 (accessed February 5, 2013); Metro, “Urban and rural reserves,” http://www.oregonmetro.gov/index.cfm/go/by.web/id=26257 (accessed February 5, 2013). 302 Sullivan and Richter, “Commentary: Once more…”. 303 Theobald, et al., “Ecological Support for Rural Land-Use Planning,” 1907. 99
Tate’s Hell State Forest and the Apalachicola National Forest, an 800,000-acre wildlife habitat and watershed area for Apalachicola Bay. Using Florida Forever as its funding source, the state connected the protected areas and allowed recreational use and timber operations to persist. With a transfer of development rights program or TDR, landowners can voluntarily transfer the rights to develop from one parcel to another that permanently conserves the “sending” parcel. This tool is useful in moving development, for instance, from an agricultural area to a location where a town might wish to encourage development or growth such as a town center or urbanized area. A TDR program has its limitations, however, as the process can be complicated and the local government must have solid planning and involve citizens and developers. Successful TDR programs in the United States include 40,000 acres of farmland and open spaces in Montgomery County, Maryland, and 6,000 acres in the New Jersey Pinelands.304 A conservation easement is another low to no cost alternative that can protect areas for recreation or those that are environmentally sensitive. By definition, it is “a voluntary agreement between landowner and an easement holder (a private land trust or government agency) that permanently limits uses of the land in order to protect natural, scenic, or historic resources.”305 The title still belongs to the landowner, but the owner agrees to surrender certain rights which might include adding more structures, but keeps the rights to continue to farm, forest, or raise livestock. It carries on to the next landowner and usually provides a tax deduction benefit with the donation of the easement. In the Red Hills area north of Tallahassee, the Red Hills Conservation Program under the direction of Tall Timbers Research Station had secured over 63,000 acres of hunting properties through conservation easements by 2002 and continued to work with willing owners in North Florida and Southwest Georgia to save such a unique eco- region while allowing the property owners to carry on the customs of hunting and agriculture. One challenge with conservation easements is a general citizen mistrust of any form of government and agreeing to relinquish any amount of property rights. However, if the right persuasion is initiated and a landowner understands the terms and benefits, conservation easements can keep lands in private ownership and on the tax rolls and provide endless protection for natural resources. Furthermore, if a landowner wishes to gain financially from an easement, a Purchase of Development Rights (PDR) can be used instead which allows the
304 1000 Friends of Florida, “Saving Special Places,” 17, 23. 305 Ibid., 24. 100 property owner to sell the development rights to the land at which time the rights are “retired” and cannot be transferred elsewhere while still allowing the land to continue “working” if it is in agriculture, timber, etc.306 Another approach that local governments have taken is to charge developers with “impact fees” that is a one-time fee (calculated by a formula set by the local government) for any new residential, commercial, or industrial development to compensate for the cost of new services that may be needed which could include roads, schools, water and sewer, police and emergency services and can also be used for recreational parks and libraries. This tool is designed to persuade developers to build where sufficient infrastructure is already in place and keep the burden off of taxpayers on whom it has traditionally fallen in the past. It is commonly known that most new development cannot generate the necessary tax revenue needed and raising property taxes has been and likely will always be politically unpopular. However, it has proven controversial as developers feel the impact fees stifle economic growth, but research has indicated that impact fees are economically efficient if correctly priced and the fees should be spent on infrastructure that will benefit the new development somehow. Statistical analysis shows a positive correlation between impact fees and job growth in a 2003 Florida study from 1993-1999, with 34 of 67 counties assessing impact fees.307 A newer concept in recent years as an alternative to the concurrency system is the mobility fee. In 2009, the Florida Department of Community Affairs and the Florida Department of Transportation conducted a joint study on mobility fees and published a report to the Legislature with recommendations on how mobility fees could be implemented in the state as a replacement to concurrency, which some developers thought was too burdensome and could prove to be too expensive after the fact if a project increased traffic over the accepted level of service. Mobility fees are generally less expensive and are used solely for the purpose of moving people and goods, such as roads, transit stops, sidewalks, trails, etc. Advocates feel this tool will encourage jobs and economic growth while channeling growth into urban areas and away from undeveloped, rural lands. Pasco County set a precedent in the summer of 2011 as it became the first Florida county to approve the establishment of mobility fees. Developers will likely look to
306 Ibid., 24-5, 27. 307 Ibid., 27; Arthur C. Nelson and Mitch Moody, “Paying for Prosperity: Impact Fees and Job Growth,” The Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy (June 2003): 1, 4, 9, 15, http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2003/6/metropolitanpolicy%20nelson/nelsonimpactfees.pd f (accessed January 7, 2013). 101 build in West Pasco and along the southern boundary as fees are lower in urban areas and some projects can even be fee exempt under certain criteria. Traditional style neighborhoods that are more pedestrian-oriented and located close to planned transit are being encouraged with the lower fees. Other counties such as Polk, Alachua, and Hillsborough have been looking into using mobility fees as well. Some issues will have to be worked out and including public input has been an important part of the process. Landowners with large rural parcels may lose property value and opponents have expressed concerns over property rights. Legal representatives are already involved, especially as Pasco County commissioners also passed rural traffic limits later in November that raises the required level of service for rural roads from a D to a C (using the standard A-F scale), making it more costly to develop. The charge was led by a group of citizens in the northeastern portion of the county that wanted to work to save the rural character of that area. 308 Similarly, in the Portland area, farmers showed up in 2009 at meetings to express their displeasure with the urban growth boundaries as many of them wanted their farmland included in case they later wanted to sell their land. According to Metro representative, Karen Kane, farm and forestland seems to be valued less in a real estate market if not within the boundary. However, she pointed to a group of farmers and environmental advocates in nearby rural Helvetia who are concerned more about keeping their land undeveloped and are not interested in its future sale.309 This may prove to be an ideal occasion to incorporate the developers’ purchasing of development rights of the rural landowners. While planning for new development in the appropriate places is essential, it is just as important to look for places that are already developed and improve those areas. Metro of Portland has focused its efforts to encourage development in its town centers and promote main street concepts that include bicycle and pedestrian mobility as well as accessible transit. Its planners realize that sustainability of the region relies on the revitalization and/or preservation of historic neighborhoods and old buildings to furnish a sense of place. Affordable housing is vital
308 Florida Department of Transportation and Florida Department of Community Affairs, “Joint Report on the Mobility Fee Methodology Study,” December 1, 2009, http://www.floridajobs.org/fdcp/dcp/MobilityFees/Files/JointReportMobilityFee12012009.pdf (accessed January 5, 2013); Lee Logan, “Pasco’s mobility fee will chart new course for county’s growth, officials hope,” St. Petersburg Times, December 29, 2011; Diane Nichols, “Polk growth may take in mobility fees,” Polk County Democrat, January 19, 2012; Lee Logan, “Rural traffic limits passed,” St. Petersburg Times, November 15, 2011. 309 Eli Segall, “Some Oregon farmers want protected farmland open for development,” Daily Journal of Commerce, Portland, December 9, 2009. 102 as well that will allow livable communities.310 Local governments in Florida have yet another tool in growth management practice by working to become designated as a Multimodal Transportation District. In 2004, the Florida legislature enhanced Statute 163.3180 (15) by declaring that a multimodal district could be created in a local government comprehensive plan that assigned certain areas to have a higher priority for pedestrians and transit connections over automobile usage as shown on their future land use map. Included in these details were community design with walkable and bikeable streets and networks, traffic calming, transit stops that can be easily accessed and within walking distance, and a mix of land uses like educational, cultural, etc. The intent is to create an environment that reduces automobile trips and focuses on a designated area where someone could easily walk, bike, or take public transportation within and fulfill their daily activities, such as work, shopping, and other services. In addition, impact fees or other fees associated with development can be decreased by a local government if vehicular trips per household or miles traveled are to be reduced within the proposed development pattern within the district boundaries.311 The City of Destin in Okaloosa County proudly claims the title of being the first municipality in Florida to implement MMTD regulations.312 In 2009, the City of Tallahassee/Leon County Multimodal Transportation District was established in the core part of the city. The MMTD plan identified that there is little to no room to widen any roads and any widening would threaten or destroy pieces of the community’s identity and that many communities within the city are “ripe for redevelopment”; the set boundaries are intended to capture the growth and development in the City for the next ten years and provide “a clear, up front figure for calculating proportionate fair-share for new development [that] will likely incentivize the redevelopment within the Multimodal District.”313 Of particular note is that the MMTD should assist in “relieving pressure on rural lands in light of the 100,000 population increase projected in Leon County over the next 20-25 years.”314 Tallahassee is also
310 Sullivan and Richter, “Commentary: Once more…”. 311 Available on line at Online Sunshine at http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_Mode=Display_Statute&URL=Ch0163/Sec3180.htm&StatutueY ear=2004. 312 City of Destin, “Transportation,” http://www.cityofdestin.com/index.aspx?NID=233 (accessed January 5, 2013). 313 Tallahassee-Leon County Planning Department, “A City Within a City: The Tallahassee-Leon County Multimodal District Plan,” (July 2008): 3, 5, 7, http://www.talgov.com/Uploads/Public/Documents/planning/pdf/trans/mttd_chap_toc.pdf (accessed January 5, 2013). 314 Ibid, ii. 103 actively promoting its Sense of Place/Placemaking initiatives with projects like Gaines Street that capitalize on a community’s already established character or identity and enhance that uniqueness with elements of urban design that includes better pedestrian and bicycle facilities (creating a more walkable/bikeable environment), landscaping, murals, underground utilities, etc. Through planning and meetings with residents and business owners, the City of Tallahassee also has other Placemaking projects ongoing such as the Market District, Monroe-Adams, and Midtown (a great opportunity to create a gateway to the City).315
Downtown Revitalization and Historic Preservation Not all cities will meet the criteria required to become a multimodal transportation district, and a much more common approach has been to revitalize downtowns and main streets. Many Panhandle towns were established well over a century ago and offer ample opportunities for historic restoration where aged buildings are still present and older places tend to have a founded and solid sense of community. Downtowns usually have a mix of different types of buildings that can be rehabilitated for office space or affordable housing and can have walkable communities that reduce a dependence on automobiles. Infill is also healthy as vacant lots can be used to build projects that will enhance the already developed area. Towns can offer financial breaks and benefits to those who wish to locate a business downtown.316 On a federal level, the National Trust for Historic Preservation was established by its namesake Act in 1966 and works as a resource for state and local programs with its National Main Street Center, which began in 1980. Other programs were created for rural preservation, heritage tourism, and historic neighborhoods, and federal funding was available until 2010, but now depends upon private contributions.317 Federal appropriations are still passed down to states, and funding exists in Florida through grants under the Department of State’s Division of Historical Resources that assist with activities such as preserving and restoring historic structures, educational programs, and historic markers. Towns can also receive designation as a Florida Main Street community, which allows the town to receive technical assistance such as training and consultation from the Bureau of Historic Preservation to preserve their historic retail
315 City of Tallahassee, “Placemaking,” http://www.talgov.com/planning/planning-compln-placemaking.aspx (accessed January 5, 2013). 316 1000 Friends of Florida, “Saving Special Places,” 19. 317 National Trust for Historic Preservation, “A Brief History of the National Trust,” http://www.preservationnation.org/who-we-are/history.html (accessed January 13, 2013). 104 districts and work together as a community to make step-by-step improvements. According to the Department of State’s website, downtown revitalization: ñ Builds a positive image for the community. ñ Reflects a community’s confidence in itself and its future. ñ Creates job opportunities. ñ Attracts new industry and strengthens service and retail job markets. ñ Saves tax dollars. ñ Stabilizes and improves the area’s tax base, and protects the investment already made in downtown infrastructure. ñ Helps to control sprawl. ñ Preserves the community’s historic resources. ñ Enables property owners to maintain historic commercial buildings and preserve an important part of the community’s heritage.318
Towns that have received designation in Northwest Florida include Apalachicola, Crestview, Lynn Haven, Marianna, Milton, Monticello, Panama City, and Quincy. As one of the most active and successful downtowns, Panama City was among the first five to receive the designation in Florida in 1985 and has gained national and state recognition and awards.319 As another example, the town of Luray in Page County, Virginia, has received accolades for its Luray Downtown Initiative (LDI). Established in 2004 under Virginia’s Main Street Program, volunteers and business owners worked together to renovate the façades of the buildings and achieve its continuous mission, “to restore the economic base, historical flavor, beauty, and vitality of our downtown district through partnering with our residents, government, and business groups.”320 Ninety miles from the nation’s capitol city, Luray was founded in 1812 in the historic Shenandoah Valley and the brick structures, streets, and sidewalks reflect the over 200-year history with the addition of murals as well as a stone covered bridge over Hawksbill
318 Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources, “Florida Main Street,” http://www.flheritage.com/preservation/mainstreet/index.cfm, http://www.flheritage.com/preservation/mainstreet/florida_main.cfm (accessed January 13, 2013). 319 Downtown Panama City, “Main Street Panama City,” http://www.pcdib.com/#!vstc2=page-3/vstc1=main-street (accessed January 13, 2013). 320 Luray Downtown Initiative, “News Releases,” http://downtownluray.com/media/news-releases/ (accessed January 7, 2013). See the press release, “The Strength of Downtown Luray, November 15, 2010,” for more information. 105
Creek, which meanders through the middle of the town. A registered National Historic District, Luray’s downtown is home to inns, bed-and-breakfasts, restaurants, shops, caverns, and museums, and is a popular venue for festivals and performing arts. The Luray-Hawksbill Greenway, a paved two-mile Birding and Wildlife Trail and Sanctuary designated by Virginia, provides an excellent opportunity for recreational users who wish to walk, run, or bike.321 Of particular interest and applicable to the comparable agrarian heritage and agricultural base of Northwest Florida is the marketing of Page County’s local working farms through Agri- tourism, allowing visitors to tour and purchase produce. The “Page County Grown” grassroots initiative supports this part of the economy and local produce is featured in nearby restaurants and even schools with the PCG logo, promoting a healthier diet and educating students about where their food comes from and how it is grown. 322 Northwest Florida has already exhibited progress similar to Luray’s success in capitalizing on its historic resources. The Santa Rosa County Historical Society, a private organization, restored the Milton L&N train depot (c. 1907- 09 on the site of the 1882 P&A depot) and has been a museum since 1989, and the Arcadia Mill Archaeological Site is now a place for visitors to experience the area’s timber mill history and see the largest antebellum water-powered industrial complex in the State, operated by West Florida Historic Preservation Incorporated in cooperation with the University of West Florida.323 Through funding from the Florida Department of Transportation, Historic State Road 1, constructed in 1921, is being restored with historically aesthetic bricks as a shared use path for pedestrians and cyclists.324 Toward the eastern end of the Panhandle, the Tallahassee-St. Marks Historic Railroad Trail, a sixteen-mile paved multi-use path (20.5 feet total trail), follows the old St. Marks rail line
321 Luray-Page County Chamber of Commerce, http://luraypage.com/ (accessed January 7, 2013); Luray Downtown Initiative, http://downtownluray.com/ (accessed January 7, 2013); Luray Downtown Initiative, “Local Attractions,” http://downtownluray.com/attractions/local-attractions/ (accessed January 7, 2013). 322 Luray-Page County Chamber of Commerce, “Agri-Tourism,” http://luraypage.com/agri-tourism/ (accessed January 7, 2013); Page County Grown, “About,” http://pagecountygrown.com/about-2/ (accessed January 7, 2013); Page County Grown, “Schools,” http://pagecountygrown.com/schools/ (accessed January 7, 2013). 323 West Florida Railroad Museum, “The Museum,” http://wfrm.org/museum.html (accessed August 16, 2011); West Florida Historic Preservation, Inc., “About Us,” http://www.historicpensacola.org/about.cfm (accessed August 16, 2011); Ibid., “About Arcadia Mill,” http://www.historicpensacola.org/arcadia.cfm (accessed August 16, 2011). 324 See the Florida Department of Transportation, Office of Work Program and Budget, “Five-Year Work Program,” http://www2.dot.state.fl.us/fmsupportapps/workprogram/WorkProgram.aspx (accessed January 7, 2013) and search Item Number 420623-1 in 2007-2012; see also the Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources, “Historical Reports,” http://www.flheritage.com/facts/reports/places/index.cfm?fuseaction=ListAreas&county=Santa%20Rosa (accessed March 7, 2013). 106 from the coast in St. Marks into Tallahassee, which operated from 1836 to 1983 (the longest in Florida), and draws visitors from all over the country, completed through cooperation of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, its Office of Greenways and Trails, and the City of Tallahassee.325 In Calhoun County, near Blountstown, private owners, Willard and Linda Smith, created the Panhandle Pioneer Settlement, a 5-acre site of donated local historic buildings, including cabins, a church, and a post office, to recreate the lifestyle and culture of the area from the 1820s to the 1940s. Exhibits and events are held regularly on the grounds and the museum’s website beautifully captures the spirit of the founders’ endeavors along with the community as it states “the Settlement’s vision is to preserve the pioneer lifestyle for future generations, encourage interest in the stories and ways of the past, provide relevant and creative educational programs, performances, exhibits, and visitor experiences, and create an inviting environment where ideas are shared and gathered.326 Classes such as blacksmithing, basket weaving, jelly making, quilting, and cooking on a woodstove are offered to participants and an annual schedule is posted of monthly upcoming events from a cappella singing to peanut boils to preparing livestock meat.327 As a slightly contentious approach, some researchers have argued that funding assistance at the state and regional level should be reserved for the more dominant towns and allow the dying towns to dry up and encourage or force migration of population and resources from the isolated towns to regional centers. Even more controversial is the idea of new towns with population caps, originally proposed in 1898 in the book, Garden Cities of Tomorrow, and again later in the 1920s and 1930s. While these suggested solutions seem a bit extreme, it could be easily agreed upon that cooperation between the planners and developers is key to success in preserving our rural areas. The “us” vs. “them” mentality has complicated growth management for decades as planners have been accused of making development costs higher and slowing the process while developers have been labeled as selfish and greedy. 328 Some have also sought to have tax classifications changed, such as in Bay County where approximately 60 percent (290,000 acres) of the land is assessed as agricultural. A recent
325 Florida State Parks, Tallahassee-St. Marks Historic Railroad State Trail, Tallahassee, Florida: Florida Department of Environmental Protection, August 2012. Information brochure. Available online at http://www.floridastateparks.org/resources/doc/individualparks/brochures/tsmst-brochure.pdf (accessed January 7, 2013). 326 Panhandle Pioneer Settlement, “About Us,” http://ppmuseum.org/about.htm (accessed January 7, 2013). 327 Panhandle Pioneer Settlement, “Events,” http://ppmuseum.org/events.htm (accessed January 7, 2013). 328 Daniels and Lapping, “The Two Rural Americas,” 286, 288. 107 candidate for the county property appraiser’s office campaigned to have the largest landowners (about six timber companies) pay taxes based on the market value of the land instead of the revenue production as provided by the State’s Greenbelt law. He argued that the “big multimillion-dollar corporate land owners…pay less than $2 per acre in property tax” and therefore, less is provided for schools and communities and other residents have higher bills to compensate this.329 However, no direction was given on whether the smaller landowners with agricultural designation would have to pay higher taxes as well and the state legislature would dictate any changes to the law that would likely be unfavorable to taxpayers. Instead, perhaps the focus should be again on stronger growth management policies, including an efficient approval process, public involvement, and solid urban growth boundaries (such as in Portland). Rural conservation and land-use planning techniques are essential and cannot be underestimated in value to the process. In addition, downtown revitalization, creating a sense of place with compact, well-designed, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods, and valuing the historic resources of the region may provide a complimentary approach and the rural areas of Northwest Florida can avoid being consumed by sprawl while the uniqueness of its communities is preserved for future generations.
329 Ali Helgoth, “More than half of county land taxes ad agricultural,” Panama City News-Herald, October 6, 2012. 108
CHAPTER SIX
CONCLUSION
“Here my navel string was cut; the earth drank the blood, which makes me love it. I was raised in th[is] country, and if it is a poor one, I love it, and do not wish to leave it.” --As spoken by the Seminole chief, Micanopy, “The Florida Crisis of 1826-27” by Canter Brown, Jr.
From the beginning of the “land of flowers” becoming an American territory, it was on the minds of many to “improve” it. Influential leaders wanted internal improvements like roads and canals, city residents were eager to divide the land into lots and bring in a railroad to make a profit, Cracker pioneers were simply trying to improve the land for sustenance and survival, and planter families were looking for a new place to settle and expand their wealth and power. The native residents, tribes including the Creek and Seminoles, were still using the land in the way they had for centuries already, and were not necessarily looking to improve it. However, they were holding up progress, and politicians were eager to court residents’ fears and seized the opportunity to remove them to the west or to reservations further south to open up the territory for more settlement and personal gain. Agriculture and the vast stores of virgin timber in North Florida provided opportunities for mills and manufacturing, and a movement toward Southern independence sprang up in certain areas. Population, although still sparse, was mostly concentrated in the Northwest section of the state. While the Civil War brought a slight pause in “progress” and Reconstruction introduced systems of sharecropping and tenant farming that would equal a life of debt for some, post- Reconstruction stirred up interest in the railroads again to move timber and goods and to transport tourists who looked for better health and relaxation. Vacationing Northerners and Henry Flagler’s railroads along the eastern coastline and South Florida sought to “civilize” this wild and untamed land and brought about an explosion of development and growth in population in the peninsula, and the state began to further transform into two distinct regions culturally. The twentieth century would bring more change, as a land boom in the 1920s, suburbanization post- World War II, and Walt Disney’s choice of location for his theme park in the late 1960s further
109 contributed to record population numbers in the southern part of the state and introduced sprawl. By 1960, all of the state’s 67 counties in existence today had been established; the state population had reached an estimated five million with a mere 422,918 residents in the Panhandle.330 As the exploitation of Florida’s land and natural resources happened, there were some who found its development unfavorable. It seemed no one could stop Henry Flagler and his Florida East Coast Railway as it made its way to Miami by the end of the 1890s; nevertheless, residents expressed their discontent with its rapid spread and with Flagler’s lack of appreciation of the land and the way people lived there. Children’s author Kirk Munroe, and his wife, Mary, as well as naturalists Charles Torrey Simpson and David Fairchild, were among the dissenters and critics who foresaw a dismal future for South Florida. They also protested the $13 million Tamiami Trail, a roadway from coast to coast that dissected the Everglades and the natural flow of water in that part of the state.331 If Flagler had not visited Florida and built his railroads and hotels along with the other developers of South Florida, surely someone else would have discovered it eventually and became its financier, transforming the state just as he did. Of course his critics held little power in comparison to Flagler and those with the grand vision of what Florida was to become. Many more naturalists and writers would champion for the environment, including Archie Carr and his wife Marjorie, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Mrs. John Roebling (wife of the grandson of the builder of the Brooklyn Bridge), and Sidney Lanier, but their focus was also on places and causes in the peninsula such as the Everglades and the nearly-constructed Cross Florida Canal. Northwest Florida has received little attention when it came to someone of any notoriety defending an environmental cause. Perhaps it is because of the lag in catching up to South Florida’s development and population or encroachment on the environmental gems in the region, or perhaps it is because no one particularly cares about saving the land mostly inhabited by leftover “Crackers” and inferior country folk. Even in popular media, films such as Follow That Dream (1962) and Sunshine State (2002) and a historical novel, A Land Remembered, all focus on man and his relationship with the land set in the peninsula of the state. Yet, Northwest
330 Derr, Some Kind of Paradise, 337; University of Virginia Library, Geospatial and Statistical Data Center, Historical Census Browser, “Florida: Total Population 1840-1960,” http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/collections/ stats/histcensus/index.html (accessed July 29, 2011). 331 Derr, Some Kind of Paradise, 163-6. 110
Floridians often discuss amongst themselves their fear of the congestion and overcrowding in the southern portion of the state. They have neighbors who moved from “down South” to this place to escape all that and they know it could happen here as well. It almost seems that there is something looming out there for Northwest Florida that will change the character of its people, its land, and the region as a whole. Certainly this change has already begun. Many residents feel it is out of their hands, that those with power and money will control the fate of the land and its people in the Panhandle. Some have simply noticed that there are more people and development has increased, but they do not really have a grasp on what is truly happening on a larger scale. State leaders have taken the poor economic situation and spun a rallying cry that more “jobs” and less growth management are what Florida needs and any regard for the land seems to be given under a façade with minimum requirements. Those concerned most with the dollar were disturbed in 2009 when the state’s population decreased for the first time in 63 years by 58,000; economists blamed the recession. Some residents blamed their property taxes that were being increased as property values dropped, hurricane insurance premiums were being hiked, and a major utility provider was lobbying to increase rates up to 30%.332 With an estimated 500-600 residents now moving into the state today, some state officials are pleased.333 Florida is the fourth populous state in the nation and expected to overtake New York for the number three slot by 2016.334 By 2060, the population of Northwest Florida is expected to be over 1.7 million.335 Such an influx of people will require more homes, roads, and services to be provided, thus forcing natural land and wildlife habitat to be lost to make room for people. As rumors of economic recovery and more development spread, Panhandle residents fear a terrifying scenario of what has happened from sprawl in South Florida. Is this direction what is best for Northwest Florida and the rest of the state? Is roadway expansion being done for safety and better hurricane
332 “Florida population drops for first time since 1946,” The Associated Press, August 18, 2009; Tim Padgett, “Florida Exodus: Rising Taxes Drive Out Residents,” Yahoo! News, Time, Sept 3, 2009. 333 The Florida Legislature, Office of Economic and Demographic Research, “Florida’s Economic Future & the Impact of Aging in Place,” May 11, 2012, 3, http://www.edr.state.fl.us/Content/presentations/economic/AginginPlaceHousingSummit.pdf (accessed January 13, 2013). 334 The Florida Legislature, Office of Economic and Demographic Research. Econographic News: Economic and Demographic News for Decision Makers 1 (2012): 2, http://www.edr.state.fl.us/Content/population- demographics/reports/econographicnews-2012v1.pdf (accessed January 13, 2013). 335 1000 Friends of Florida, “Florida 2060: A Population Distribution Scenario for the State of Florida,” 1000 Friends of Florida, http://www.1000friendsofflorida.org/connecting-people/florida-smart-growth-advocates-2/ (accessed December 21, 2012). 111 evacuation? Are their silent proprietors in the background capitalizing on this to welcome more tourists into the state? Is tourism a sustainable industry and is it important enough to abandon agriculture and farming? What effect will this have on our resources, our environment, our culture, and our people? Is there any ‘Last Frontier’ left in this part or any part of the state? Northwest Floridians must wake up and decide their own future! Panhandle residents can and must work to save their rural way of life through methods of conservation. Communities can work to revive existing towns and preserve historical treasures to showcase to visitors and teach future generations about their heritage. Planners and developers must work together to find the appropriate places for new development to occur, and elected officials and government should only approve development that is right to limit sprawl. Growth management needs a rebirthing so that the State has oversight of what is best for the region. The quality of life that is touted as the driving reason to come to Florida needs to be protected. This quality of life is given to Floridians in natural resources, agricultural heritage, and open spaces, and is part of the rural character that makes each community in the Panhandle unique and a place to be cherished. One should hope that there are still a few agrarians left in the region who see farming, its values, and “the importance of household independence, family cohesion, community sharing and cooperation, and the virtue of working the land.”336
336 Winters, “Agriculture in the Post-World War II South,” 26. 112
EPILOGUE
“To me, it is this…to feel the mystery of a seclusion that yet has shafts of light striking through it. This is the essence of an ancient and secret magic. It goes back, perhaps to the fairy tales of childhood…to all the half-luminous places that pleased the imagination as a child…here is that mystic loveliness of childhood again. Here is home.” -- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings in Cross Creek
The rural way of life here in Northwest Florida has already changed since my youth in the 1980s. During the real estate boom of the last decade, I watched with melancholy as people sold land that had been in their families for generations and it seemed the dream of having my own farm was hopeless. Folks would tell me, “You can’t stop development. It’s coming. You might as well accept it.” However, I became obsessed with it—monitoring land prices and talking to anyone who would listen. Needless to say, I found a few residents who shared my ideals and concerns. It seemed so many had resigned to the notion that “progress” would continue unheeded. It almost seemed like they welcomed it with open arms because of what it made their land worth in a monetary sense regardless of how it could change our environment and culture. As a child, we could walk in the woods nearby of the timber company land or a landowner who lived far away that didn’t tend to his property and find old stashes of where folks used to dump trash. While it might seem like trespassing, it generally was not an issue because either the landowner didn’t care or “No Trespassing” signs would be posted and we stayed out. Once when we were looking for Mayhaw berries, we found dozens of glass bottles that included a one with a funny dumbbell-shape that my dad said was what used to sell Kool-Aid. He speaks of a time when you knew every car that passed (which might total only 3 or 4 a day). I watch my father continue his practice of waving at every car he passes on the highway out to our dirt road, which everyone else used to do and rarely do you see anymore. This is something Bill Bellville mentions in Losing It All to Sprawl that was a common gesture during the boyhood of one of his home’s previous occupants. I see the sense of community has slowly been chipped away and I ask—when did this happen? Surely it was not overnight. I remember the elders talking about it in the mid-1990s, how the “old timers” were dying off and that way of life was dying with them.
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That comment was made by the local pastor who came to visit when my paternal grandmother died in 1996 and my aunt showed him a broom she used made from the broom sedge in the field. It makes me terribly sad that my children will only know that kind of life through stories that I tell them and I must admit that I only know of the many stories from that hard way of life because they were told to me. Once in interviewing my Granny for a school project (and yes, we still use that term of endearment), I asked her if she thought life was better now (being 1999 at that time) or in the 1930s. She smiled and said in her most beautiful Southern dialect, “Well, in some ways, it’s better now. You have TV and cars and things like that and can go and do more. But then, in ways, it was better back then…people would go visit a while with each other. People are just in too big of a hurry today…things moving too fast.” This got quite a few nods and “amens” from the crowd when we played the video at her “home-going celebration” in 2011. Sadly, I am one of those who live in too big of a hurry today and enjoy those modern conveniences. I try to connect myself to the land, but sometimes it seems that all I have to show for being the descendent of hardworking Florida pioneers is my soft accent that I am often judged for in the professional world, but I use it to my advantage to overcome the stereotype and get things done. I try to speak as eloquently as possible, but still get odd looks (some good, some bad); Dr. Jim Jones in FSU’s History Department told me it reminded him of his mother (who was from the northeast section of Florida, I believe), which I took as a compliment, and he said it was definitely a “Bonifay/Chipley accent” that “you just don’t hear much anymore.” I am certainly not an Unreconstructed Southerner, but I do know a few and I try to cut them a little slack for I feel like they are just stuck in a time period and mostly miss a way of life that they cannot get back to and in ways, I guess I can relate to that. This way of life has more to do with things like helping your neighbors, minding your manners, saying “Yes, Ma’am” and “No, Sir,” knowing where you came from as well as the local gossip (hopefully good), and cooking your greens the right way (i.e., just being a Southerner), than it does with meanness or hatred for anyone or any of the other negative attributes that the “elite and educated” try to pin on us. I am happy that some things changed along the way and it seems especially that the younger generation is a bit more progressive in attitude. My husband and I recently bought forty acres from my aunt (dad’s sister) and uncle that for many years I had been longing for because it is surrounded by woods and is one of the more isolated spots around; they bought it in 1970 from my mother’s parents and a black man named
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Wesley Scott owned it before them. We plan to make our home site and garden in the small, five-acre field and keep the rest in the natural hardwoods that have grown up on it over the last forty-plus years after they stopped farming it. I can only see more and more people coming and it disturbs me. I want our children to know what it is like to grow up around cows and chickens and be able to explore the woods not far from home. It was hard for me to finally let go of living where I live now, as it was the place where my great-great-grandfather had settled. I had once listened to my dad proudly tell a car salesman filling in an application that he had lived at the same address for 46 years (he is now 65) and that he was never going anywhere. He also told us, his three daughters, that he never wanted the land sold unless it became unfitting to live on or if there was a necessity such as a medical need. Marrying my father at seventeen, my poor mother never stood a chance at living anywhere else, but I never once remember hearing her complain. I feel as though my dad is probably disappointed that only one of his daughters will continue to live here, but I had to make my own destiny. For an educated resident of Northwest Florida, there are a lot of conflicts that go on in the heart. With the vexing economic situation occurring over the last few years, it is comforting that development has slowed and developers are having to really consider their business ventures before throwing another high-rise condo on the beach or another sub-division out there to contribute to sprawl. One has to wonder, however, if any of them are questioning how to feed their families and stretch their dollars to make it to the next paycheck. However comforting that notion of slowed development is in saving our rural places, it is bittersweet as many families, middle and lower class, are burdened with those kinds of decisions concerning their livelihoods. The hard economy does not offer comfort to the neighbors, families, and friends who are struggling. It is ironic that even as land prices have started to descend, residents are so financially burdened that few can consider or are willing to buy a farm or acreage for agriculture, timber, etc. Alas, the rural way of life has already changed for them, too. What will the anthropologists say when they look back and study us? Will they see the farming implements or the canned jars of food? Will they notice the graves with the similar names and know at one time communities came from a handful of families who lived here for generations? Will they see any tall pine trees with cuts made from turpentining? Will they know that grandparents worked to clear the land to farm, cows once roamed the small hills, and children once freely played in the creeks in those sultry dog days of summer? Will historians
115 have record about the few days after a hurricane when having no electricity was inconvenient but afforded the opportunity for a brief moment to feel time slow down so you could “rough it” with the family, eating out of a can of baked beans, sleeping on a plastic lawn chaise outside under the stars, hear the locusts singing, and take a bath in the creek down the road? Will there be any trace of a beautiful and slow drawl of Southern English leftover from generations of a mix of Scots-Irish pioneers and a language that is as unique as Northwest Florida? We should certainly hope so.
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APPENDIX A
PERMISSION LETTERS
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DATE NEEDED:
Zena Riley-Taylor's question:
Hi. I am a graduate student at FSU (MAin American Studies) and am submitting my thesis today or tomorrow to make the Final Submission Deadline to graduate this semester. However, I need information on copyright for 4 images: #69655 from the Photographic Collection, and #212410, 212461, 212462 from the Broadsides Collection, and whether I am able to use these or need to remove the images. Any help would be most appreciated, preferably as soon as possible so I can make the submission deadline.
Thanks so much!
Florida is headed in the right direction! View Florida's Jobs Growth Chart: http://www. flgov .co m/photoview/jobcreationcha rt.jpg The Department of State is leading the commemoration of Florida's SOOth anniversary in 2013. For more information, please go to www.flaSOO.com. The Department of State is committed to excellence. Please take our Customer Satisfaction Survey: http://su rvey.dos.state. fl.us/index.aspx?e mail=
file:///F:/DOS e-mail.htm 4/5/2013
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REFERENCES
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---. “Saving Special Places: A Citizen’s Guide to Protecting Natural Resources in Florida’s Panhandle.” 2004. http://www.1000friendsofflorida.org/PUBS/SavingSpcPlaces/37756_FOF%20spec%20pl aces.pdf. Accessed December 21, 2012.
Agresti, Barbara. “Town and Country in a Florida Rural County in the Late 19th Century: Some Population and Household Comparisons.” Rural Sociology 42, no. 4 (Winter 1977): 556- 568.
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Bailey, E. B. Florida, Jefferson County, where it is, and what can be done here. Broadside/Advertisement. Monticello, Florida: 1887. From Florida Memory, Florida Broadsides. http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/212461, http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/212462. Accessed September 11, 2009.
Baptist, Edward E. “The Migration of Planters to Antebellum Florida: Kinship and Power.” The Journal of Southern History 62, no. 3 (August 1996): 527-554.
Barnhill, Taylor. Interview by Rob Amberg. Documenting the American South, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), Oral Histories of the American South, Environmental Transformations in North Carolina. Interview K-0245, November 29, 2000.
Bartram, William. The Travels of William Bartram, Francis Harper’s Naturalist Edition. Edited by Francis Harper. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1998.
Bellville, Bill. Losing It All to Sprawl: How Progress Ate My Cracker Landscape. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005.
Bolton, Charles C. “Farmers Without Land: The Plight of White Tenant Farmers and Sharecroppers.” Mississippi History Now (March 2004). http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/articles/228/farmers-without-land-the-plight-of-white-tenant- farmers-and-sharecroppers. Accessed February 21, 2013.
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Boone, Darhyl. Interview by Rob Amberg. Documenting the American South, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), Oral Histories of the American South, Environmental Transformations in North Carolina. Interview K-0246, December 5, 2000.
Brown, Jr., Canter. “The Florida, Atlantic and Gulf Central Railroad, 1851-1868.” The Florida Historical Quarterly 69, no. 4 (April 1991): 411-429.
---. “The Florida Crisis of 1826-1827 and the Second Seminole War.” The Florida Historical Quarterly 73, no. 4 (April, 1995): 419-442.
Burbick, Joan. Rodeo Queens and the American Dream. New York: PublicAffairs Books, 2002.
Butts, Robert P. “Private Property Rights in Florida: Is Legislation the Best Alternative?.” Journal of Land Use & Environmental Law (Spring 1997): 247-274.
Carswell, E.W. Holmesteading: The History of Holmes County. Edited by Ray Reynolds. Bonifay, Florida: Holmes County Public Library, 1986, reprinted 2003.
City of Destin. “Transportation.” http://www.cityofdestin.com/index.aspx?NID=233. Accessed January 5, 2013.
City of Panama City Beach, Panama City Beach Comprehensive Growth Development Plan, Section 4Transportation (October 2009), 7. www.pcbgov.com/uploads/plans/1/section4/section4-transportation.pdf. Accessed January 19, 2012.
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Ziewitz, Kathryn, and June Wiaz. Green Empire: The St. Joe Company and the Remaking of Florida’s Panhandle. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2004.
Zwick, Paul D., and Margaret H. Carr. “Florida 2060: A Population Distribution Scenario for the State of Florida.” A research project prepared by the GeoPlan Center at the University of Florida for 1000 Friends of Florida, August 15, 2006. http://www.1000friendsofflorida.org/connecting-people/florida-smart-growth-advocates- 2/. Accessed March 15, 2013.
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Raised on the former farm of her paternal grandparents and a sixth-generation Holmes County, Florida native, Zena Riley-Taylor was born in the spring of 1980. Through family vacations around the country, Zena was able to visit important historical sites and see the beauty of America’s states, and thus, a love of history and nature began. Growing up in a rural area, she was afforded the opportunity of watching her grandmother milk her few cows and help out with summer gardens by picking and shelling peas.
Zena attended Florida State University and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Management Information Systems in the Fall of 2002. With a sense of accomplishment but a lack of soulful satisfaction, she began her professional career as a contract computer technician at the Florida Department of Transportation the following year.
In Apri l 2004, she began her tenure for the State of Florida in Roadway Design. Feeling unsatisfied still, she turned back to her love of history and writing and began the American and Studies Program at Florida State University to earn a Master of Arts. In October 2007, she became the District Bicycle/Pedestrian Coordinator, and for over five years, she diligently and happily worked and fought to create a better and safer environment for those who walk and bike in the region while continuing her graduate work in Southern rural studies.
Zena currently works as a Growth Management Specialist for the Florida Department of Transportation. She is passionate about rural areas and their culture and people, and hopes to someday begin an oral history project on rural life in Holmes County and find a way into the creative writing profession and continue to travel as she still has five states left to visit.
Zena is married to William Brandon Taylor, and they have a young son, Zandt. She and her husband plan to homestead a portion of her maternal grandparents’ old farm in the Bethlehem Community of Holmes County. She hopes that Northwest Floridians will be inspired to work to save their rural places to be preserved for future generations.
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