To put into perspective all that has happened since Florida entered the Union 165 years ago, consider this: After the president signed the Statehood Act on March 3, 1845, it took five days for the news to reach Tallahassee and 10 days for a copy of the act to be delivered to the state Capitol. Today, we can cross the country in mere hours and receive information almost instantly from around the globe, even from space.
Since statehood, Florida has evolved in ways its early settlers scarcely could have imagined. All of Florida contained only about 70,000 people in 1845, most of those in northern sections. St. Augustine, Pensacola, Tallahassee and Jacksonville, the main settlements, held few amenities. The island village of Key West was a weeks voyage away.
At statehood time, inhabitants in the southern part of the peninsula numbered only in the hundreds -- mainly Seminoles and some escaped slaves, and the U.S. Army troops who pursued them through the trackless wilds. A few dozen hardy families settled along the Indian River Lagoon, attracted in the 1840s by the federal governments Armed Occupation Act that offered 160-acre land grants.
Civil War Era
By the time of the Civil War, other settlers had pushed south, establishing farms and citrus groves in Central Florida and grazing cattle across the vast Kissimmee prairie. During the war, Floridas main value to the Confederacy was as a supplier of meat, salt, vegetables and other goods rather than troops. Cattle would be shipped out through such primitive ports as Punta Rassa, on the lower Gulf coast. Weapons and equipment were smuggled past the Union naval blockade into out-of-the-way inlets on the Atlantic side. Communication in Florida was only as fast as a horse could run or a boat could sail.
A great surge of development occurred between the Civil War and the end of the nineteenth century. Floridas political leaders were eager for progress and granted favorable terms to investors. Railways were steadily expanded, most famously Henry Plants line into Tampa and Henry Flaglers along the east coast. Telegraph lines were strung. Shallow-draft steamboats plied the interior lakes and rivers.
Some Northerners began migrating seasonally to Florida, a prelude to later waves of tourists. South of Lake Okeechobee, industrialist Hamilton Disston acquired huge tracts and set his steam dredges to work scouring out canals. The sprawling Everglades area was seen only as unproductive swampland, ripe for conversion to towns and farms.
Economic Development Quickens
As the twentieth century dawned, the pace of change quickened. Tampas status as a seaport was boosted by the 1898 war with Spain. An influx of Cuban exiles turned Tampa into a cigar-making center. A series of winter freezes destroyed many Central Florida groves and forced citrus growers farther south. By this time, Flaglers railroad had reached the growing town of Miami. Floridas agricultural economy got a boost as railroads made it easier and faster to ship products to Northern markets.
Floridas next surge of economic development came after the World War I. Jacksonville, Tampa and Miami were growing into bustling seaports. A surge in federal and state road-building linked cities and towns with paved highways. New residents arrived, plus tourists in larger numbers. Affluent visitors congregated in resort towns such as Palm Beach, Naples and Sarasota, plus the emerging Miami Beach built with sand dredged from shallow Biscayne Bay. Other not-so-wealthy visitors -- the so-called tin-can tourists parked small trailers or pitched tents in campgrounds up and down the peninsula.
People kept coming. The 1920s brought a boom unlike any Florida had seen before. Real-estate prices zoomed higher. Grand plans were made for new towns, movie studios and resorts. The new Floridians partied on illicit liquor smuggled in from Cuba or the Bahamas.
Turbulent Times Strike Suddenly
Then, the party ended hastened by disastrous hurricanes in 1926 and 1928. Florida was in deep financial misery before the rest of the nation entered the Great Depression.
Floridians limped through the 1930s many of the jobless existing by hunting, fishing or growing their own vegetables and fruit. New Deal projects put thousands to work on new bridges, roads or the big Hoover Dike around Lake Okeechobee. The Flagler railroad finally reached Key West, but only after a 1935 hurricane swept through, killing hundreds of tracklayers.
World War II changed everything for Florida. Military facilities airfields, training bases, hospitals sprang up. Shipyards and naval depots geared up for the war effort. The enemy submarine threat along Floridas long coastline even revived an old idea for a cross-state barge canal, a scheme that persisted for more than a half-century before being abandoned. Thousands of soldiers, sailors and airmen from across America saw Florida for the first time, liked it enormously, and resolved to return after the war.
This created the great influx of new residents and visitors through the 1950s and60s a human wave that brought more prosperity but problems too. There were new housing tracts, even whole new towns, where cattle ranches and citrus groves had been. Local governments struggled to meet demand for more schools, libraries and public services. Sprawling new theme parks, such as Walt Disney World near Orlando, became magnets for international vacationers.
New Political, Social Landscape Develops
Politically, Florida was being transformed. New residents from other states brought differing ideas about government. Before the 1960s, governorships and most other important offices were settled in the Democratic Party primaries, but by the end of that decade, Republicans had made serious inroads. Florida politics evolved into a robust two-party competition.
Socially, too, the state was changing. Exiles from Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America added to Floridas already vibrant Hispanic culture, dating from Spanish colonial days. The era of racial desegregation helped to set Florida on a path toward more economic and social justice.
The past several decades have been marked (until the current recession) by steady population growth -- soaring past 16 million by the turn of the century. A movement for environmental protection gathered momentum in those years, aimed toward saving the Everglades and safeguarding the quality of Floridas estuaries and rivers.
For many decades, the states economy has rested mainly on the twin pillars of agriculture and tourism, subject to up-and-down cycles often caused by forces beyond Floridas control. An effort to erect a dependable third pillar is reflected in the drive to cultivate more clean industry throughout the state. The space program has done wonders for the area around Cape Canaveral, but its future is uncertain.
As the Florida Legislature convenes in Tallahassee for its 2010 session, lawmakers will face hard financial choices. Their decisions will largely determine Floridas economic viability in the years ahead. In sharp contrast to 165 years ago, the public will not have to wait days for news to travel. Within minutes, details of governmental decisions can speed throughout the state. The Floridians of 1845 would be amazed.
Ted Burrows is a former editorial writer and editor for Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers. He is a longtime member of the Florida Historical Society and has served on its board of directors. He resides in Fort Pierce.
