For more than 50 years, there was no more iconic Florida tourist attraction than Silver Springs. Its sheer popularity meant that the surrounding area--indeed, the entirety of Marion County--serviced the entertainment, gas, food, and lodging needs of millions of tourists annually. Visitors flocked to places like Ross Allen's Reptile Institute, Tommy Bartlett's Deer Ranch, and natural attractions like Rainbow Springs and Ocala Caverns. Sadly, as Florida tourism moved into the theme park era, scores of smaller attractions and their related businesses were abandoned. Author Tim Hollis revisits these once-thriving tourist spots and what happened when those tourists stopped coming.

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.

While Atlanta has been a major tourist destination since the Civil War, travelers rarely encountered the rest of Georgia unless they were on their way to Florida. That meant scores of attractions, motels, restaurants and gas stations sprang up along the major and minor routes, all vying for their own piece of those Yankee dollars. In Lost Attractions of Georgia, author Tim Hollis introduces us to such defunct sights as Storyland and the Georgia Game Park, as well as now-extinct elements of popular attractions, including Six Flags Over Georgia, Rock City, Stone Mountain Park and others.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is among the most visited national parks in the country, and countless attractions around its borders have tried for decades to siphon some of those valuable tourist dollars. From ersatz western towns and concrete dinosaurs to misplaced Florida-type attractions and celebrity theaters, you will find them all preserved in this book. Author Tim Hollis showcases those businesses that no longer exist, from Hill-Billy Village in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg's theme parks on the Tennessee side to the motels of Cherokee and Ghost Town in the Sky on the North Carolina side.