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 has the longest recorded history of any state, dating back to the journeys of Spanish conquistadores in the early sixteenth century. From the voyages of Ponce de León to the dawn of the Space Age, Florida has played an important role in the history of the United States. This concise history shows Florida's evolution from European colony to American state and jewel of the Sunbelt. It chronicles the struggles between the United States and Spain, the trauma of the Civil War, and the great booms of development in the twentieth century, as well as how Floridians have grappled with the problems of over development in the 'Sunshine State'. Over 50 illustrations, photographs, and maps enrich this text, which is perfect for the vacationer, the student, and all curious readers.

Camping is perhaps the quintessential American activity. We camp to escape, to retreat, to "find" ourselves. The camp serves as a home-away-from-home where we might rethink a deliberate life. We also camp to find a new collective space where family and society converge. Many of us attended summer camps, and the legacies of these childhood havens form part of American culture. In Campsite, Charlie Hailey provides a highly original and artfully composed interpretation of the cultural significance and inherently paradoxical nature of camps and camping in contemporary American society. Offering a new understanding of the complex relationship between place, time, and architecture in an increasingly mobile culture, Hailey explores campsites as places that necessitate a unique combination of contrasting qualities, such as locality and foreignness, mobility and fixity, temporality and permanence, and public domesticity. Camping methods reflect the rigid flexibility of the process: leaving home, arriving at a site, clearing an area, making and then finally breaking camp. The phases of this sequence are both separate and indistinct. To understand this paradox, Hailey emphasizes the role of process. He constructs a philosophical framework to elucidate the "placefulness" -- or sense of place -- of such temporary constructions and provides alternative understandings of how we think of the home and of public versus private dwelling spaces.Historically, camps have been used as places for scouting out future towns, for clearing provisional spaces, and for making semipermanent homes-away-from-home. To understand how "cultures of camping" develop and accommodate this dynamic mix of permanence and flexibility, Hailey looks at three basic qualities of the camp: as a site for place-making, as a populist precursor for modern built environments, and as a "method." Hailey's creative and philosophical approach to camps and camping allows him to construct links between such diverse projects as the "philosophers' camps" of the mid-nineteenth century, the idiosyncratic camping clubs that arose with the automobile culture in the early 1920s, and more recent uses of campsites as temporary housing for those displaced by Hurricane Katrina.In Campsite, Hailey makes a singular and significant contribution to current studies of place and vernacular architecture while also reconfiguring methods of research in cultural studies, architectural theory, and geography.

As late as 1900, most whites regarded the tropics as "the white man's grave," a realm of steamy fertility, moral dissolution, and disease. So how did the tropical beach resort—white sand, blue waters, and towering palms—become the iconic vacation landscape? Tropical Whites explores the dramatic shift in attitudes toward and popularization of the tropical tourist "Southland" in the Americas: Florida, Southern California, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Catherine Cocks examines the history and development of tropical tourism from the late nineteenth century through the early 1940s, when the tropics constituted ideal winter resorts for vacationers from the temperate zones. Combining history, geography, and anthropology, this provocative book explains not only the transformation of widely held ideas about the relationship between the environment and human bodies but also how this shift in thinking underscored emerging concepts of modern identity and popular attitudes toward race, sexuality, nature, and their interconnections. Cocks argues that tourism, far from simply perverting pristine local cultures and selling superficial misunderstandings of them, served as one of the central means of popularizing the anthropological understanding of culture, new at the time. Together with the rise of germ theory, the emergence of the tropical horticulture industry, changes in passport laws, travel writing, and the circulation of promotional materials, national governments and the tourist industry changed public perception of the tropics from a region of decay and degradation, filled with dangerous health risks, to one where the modern traveler could encounter exotic cultures and a rejuvenating environment.

Recognized for its poise and fashion, Miami Beach embodies the best elements of the new American city: cultural diversity, imaginative architecture, and dazzling scenery. In many aspects, Miami Beach is a metropolitan masterpiece, sculpted by the careful hands of visionary entrepreneurs against a magnificent coastal backdrop. The evolution of Miami Beach from a small, uninhabited strip of palmetto scrub and swamp into an internationally-renowned resort is a fascinating tale of human ingenuity, endurance, and foresight. A milestone in the city's development, the year 1920 marked many significant improvement, such as the new County Causeway bridge, and many "firsts" for the expanding hamlet, including the first electric trolley, the first automated telephone system, and its first post office building. Readers of all ages will be thoroughly entertained as they explore their Miami Beach of yesteryear: a time of Prohibition and bootlegging, grand hotels and lavish casinos, budding polo fields and golf courses, and the many distinct personalities that added color and life to this burgeoning town.

St. Petersburg was the first American city to hire a public relations director and the first to initiate a successful advertising program. More than almost any other Florida city, St. Petersburg relied on a constant message in postcards, newspaper editorials, print ads and broadcast commercials to market itself as the nation's playground. By the early 1900s, this sleepy fishing village had become the tourist destination of choice for thousands of winter-weary northerners. Early enthusiasts claimed the sun-filled peninsula was "the southern garden of perpetual well-being." Their methods ranged from serious academic papers to outrageous bathing suit inspections and "world record" schemes. Join" "historian Nevin D. Sitler as he presents an entertaining look at the men who crafted the promotion of paradise..

The 1920s was a time of unprecedented growth in the nation's oldest city. Fueled by a land boom that began in South Florida, St. Augustine was inundated with land speculators and new subdivisions. The city floated a million-dollar bond issue to construct the Bridge of Lions, and D.P. Davis filled in a marshland to build the magnificent subdivision of Davis Shores. A new coastal highway linked the town with beaches to the north and south and opened up St. Augustine's beautiful shoreline for development. All of this activity halted when the land boom collapsed in the late 1920s. St. Augustine in the Roaring Twenties details the roller-coaster events of the city in this exciting decade.