With the arrival of the twentieth century, Americans continued in the pioneering spirit of their forebears and looked upon the automobile as a new way to explore the unknown. Thousands of Americans packed their tents in the backs of their cars and set out to enjoy the back roads of the United States. Carrying extra gasoline in five-gallon cans, plenty of canned food, and extra tires strapped to the fenders, these intrepid souls began an exploration of the North American continent with a thoroughness that put Lewis and Clark to shame. These tourists became the symbol of another "New Generation" of Americans, restless, adventuresome, and filled with boundless curiosity. These were the "Tin Can" tourists. In 1919, the official organization of Tin Can Tourists of the World was formed in Tampa, and the group held two meetings annually until disbanding in 1977. Early on, residents of Florida recognized the potential economic impact of the Tin Canners on the state, and the movement to improve roads and provide accommodations and amusements to these seasonal travelers flourished. By 1930, Florida had built more than 3,000 miles of paved roads, and campsites, roadside motels, and exotic animal parks could be found along most major thoroughfares.

Florida gardens illustrate the amazing biodiversity of the state as well as plant collections from other tropical areas of the world. In The Garden Tourist's Florida, garden designer Jana Milbocker guides you on a fantastic tour of 80 tropical gardens and provides all the information you need to make the most of your visit. From the plantation-style gardens of northern Florida to the private Edens of painters and sculptors, botanical collections of world-renowned plant hunters, and European-inspired estates of Miami, there is something for every gardener to enjoy in a tour of the state. The Garden Tourist's Florida features outstanding botanical gardens, historic estates, butterfly gardens and zoos, specialty nurseries, and off-the-beaten-path destinations for the passionate gardener. - Preview 80 outstanding gardens in 204 pages richly illustrated with 500 photos. - Enjoy the best botanical and historic gardens in Florida. - Plan your trips with regional maps, contact information, sample itineraries, and garden amenities.

"For more than a century, Florida has thrived on its image as an exotic playground. The state was an early innovator in tourism marketing, with fun, colorful, evocative print advertisements designed to reinforce the state's selling points: beautiful weather, clear waterways, citrus, and unique man-made attractions." "Selling the Sunshine State is a scrapbook of bygone brochures, postcards, souvenirs, and photos, all designed to lure new guests and residents to the peninsula. Avid Floridiana collector and cultural historian Tim Hollis's personal collection forms the heart of the nearly 500 color images herein. This lovingly assembled book is arranged according to the state's traditional tourism department regions, such as the Miracle Strip, the Big Bend, and the Gold Coast. This fascinating book opens a window to the lost attractions and sometimes shocking appeals made in promotional material created from the 1920s through the 1970s."--BOOK JACKET.

Beginning in the early 1950s, the 130 miles of Florida coastline stretching from Panama City to Pensacola were branded as the Miracle Strip. Between those cities, oddities sprang up: goofy miniature golf courses, neon-bedecked motels, reptile farms and attractions that sought to re-create environments ranging from the South Pacific to the ghost towns of the Old West. In total, it was a marketing effort that worked brilliantly. Tourists flocked to the Strip, and now they can return. Author Tim Hollis presents a colorful array of these now-vanished sights, from the garish Miracle Strip Amusement Park to such oddities as Castle Dracula and the Museum of the Sea and Indian.

Take a trip to exotic South Florida with this dark, funny book that established Carl Hiaasen as one of the top mystery writers in the game. The first sign of trouble is a Shriner's fez washed up on a Miami beach. The next is a suitcase containing the almost-legless body of the local chamber of commerce president found floating in a canal. The locals are desperate to keep the murders under wraps and the tourist money flowing. But it will take a reporter-turned-private eye to make sense of a caper that mixes football players, politicians, and one very hungry crocodile . . . 'One of the top ten destination reads of all time' - GQ 'Leaves you grinning' - New York Times

"In the book's impressionistic and personal moments, Rieff succeeds in capturing the mood of the city. He is pleasantly open to the place he is exploring and generally maintains a stance of naïveté--the mark of a good travel writer."--New York Times Book Review "A clear, insightful book of firsthand impressions of Florida's once-heralded Magic City and what its flamboyant Latinization since the 1960s means. Rieff looks thoughtfully at Miami as America's New Havana, with a nod to the image fostered by TV's Miami Vice--an easygoing recital of his visits with some of Miami's most influential Cuban leaders, ranging from moderates to possibly murderous, anti-Castro politicos, along with tours of the city's now-famed Calle Ocho stretch."--Publishers Weekly "David Rieff gives Miami the treatment it deserves: an anti-travelogue that tours states of mind and basks in projected images. . . . No cub reporter, he wisely dodges the dry testimony of experts in favor of the hunches that emerge from after-dinner gossip. His factual storehouse is stocked with random bits of the social environment: menus, in-flight movies, graffiti, Toltec pottery, Phil Donahue."--Commentary "A book that restores one's faith in the foreignness of America. A shrewd, inquisitive guide to a city that has been over-glamourized, much condescended to (though not by Rieff), and rarely understood--and to one of the world's oddest and most intensely knit exiled communities, the Cubans in Miami. Read before heading south."--Robert Hughes, author of The Fatal Shore From David Rieff's preface to the new edition: "This book is a personal narrative as well as a book about Miami at the moment in the mid-1980s when the transformation of the city by its Cuban exile population was achieving critical mass. . . . I never believed that Miami was, as some people said at the time, 'the new Casablanca' or the capital of Latin America. What I did believe--and continue to believe--is that it was a harbinger of many things about America's future, from the inescapability of the Spanish language and of the further hispanicization of the United States to the broader phenomenon of a radical demographic shift in which the country, in only a few generations, has gone from being comprised largely of people of European and, to a lesser extent, African origin, to being an anthology of the world's peoples. That is now clear." David Rieff is the author of Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West; The Exile: Cuba in the Heart of Miami; and Los Angeles: Capital of the Third World. His work appears regularly in various publications including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, The Nation, Esquire, New Republic, and Newsweek. He is a freelance journalist and writer living in New York City.

This authoritative and beautifully illustrated guide to Florida's souvenir legacy contains over 500 color illustrations of Sunshine State trinkets that were really works of art.