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Scholars over the past decade have interrogated tourism and promoters’ manipulation of historical memory. The maturity of this subfield has provided fertile ground for Tracy J. Revels’s much-welcomed, concise survey of Florida tourism from the days of Ponce de León to the present. Revels provides a highly readable and witty study that focuses on the types of vacationers and promoters who defined eras in the evolution of Florida tourism. For Revels, “Florida is tourism” (p. 1). Beginning in the 1820s, sufferers of respiratory ailments journeyed to Key West, St. Augustine, and Pensacola to enjoy the warmth and fresh air. By the mid-1800s, sportsmen came to hunt and fish. The development of railroads across the American South after the Civil War created a boom in tourism during the 1870s and 1880s. The arrival of the tycoon developers Henry Plant and Henry Flagler made Florida a fashionable winter haven for the wealthy by the turn of the century. Between 1900 and 1945 “Florida gained an international reputation as America’s leisure paradise, and began moving away from its designation as a ‘Southern’ state in terms of culture” (p. 64). Higher wages and more vacation time, along with the advent of the automobile and air travel, made the state increasingly accessible to more people. After World War II, Florida became a “state of imagination” (p. 101). Promoters, most famously Walt Disney, transformed the landscape to appeal to American fantasies of a glorious past, prosperous present, and promising future. By the late twentieth century, however, accommodating the millions of tourists had severely taxed the natural beauty of Florida, as runoff turned once-popular natural springs cloudy, highways scarred the landscape, and condominiums suffocated coastal dunes, all while pollution was also spoiling the air, land, and sea.
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