The Florida Man Mythos

Incessantly following the legacy set by the legend of Ponce de Léon, vacationers have long flocked to Florida in search of improved health and longevity. The 1764 speech, A Proclamation by His Excellency James Grant Governor and Commander in Chief [of the Province East Florida], makes the following declaration on behalf of the British king:

"I do in this proclamation further publish and make known that the former inhabitants lived to great Ages. His Majesty's troops since their taking possession of it have enjoyed an uninterrupted state of Good health. Fevers which are so common during the autumn in other parts of America are not known here." (1764)

This oration serves as one of the earliest records of someone directly advertising a move to Florida for its health benefits, and it was followed by many similar announcements in countless other pieces of travel literature over the centuries. These claims relied primarily on the belief that the peninsula's climate and wildlife had a healing effect on people. An increased focus on one's wellbeing coincided with the rise of romantic era ideals promoting newfound admiration for undisturbed landscapes. Many believed spending time in a place as beautiful as Florida would ail their maladies. At the same time, many colonists began projecting their romantic ideals about nature onto the very people they were displacing. Though they write of Florida's Natives in pleasant tones and poetic language, their depictions still often rely upon the "noble savage" trope that regards Indigenous people as less fit for civilization than Europeans. Having witnessed the Seminoles and other groups fight so fiercely to maintain their homes, non-Natives intrinsically associated their neighbors with violent disputes over what they saw as paradise for their taking and often lacked remorse for the conditions of their fellow man.

In his 1791 book, The Travels of William Bartram, the titular author describes his naturalist journey and eventual love for Florida, pondering its role to the Natives:

"How happily situated is this retired spot of earth! What an elisium it is! where the wandering Siminole, the naked red warrior, roams at large, and after the vigorous chase retires from the scorching heat of the meridian sun. Here he reclines, and reposes under the odoriferous shades of Zanthoxilon, his verdant couch guarded by the Deity; Liberty, and the Muses, inspiring him with wisdom and valor, while the balmy zephyrs fan him to sleep." (1791)

Bartram's account of the land portrays the Seminole people as fiercesome, transient, unashamed in nudity, and predisposed to leisure. This characterization stems from what he observes to be their relationship with the peninsula's landscape, intertwined with spirituality at the cost of perceived primitivity and settled in stark contrast with the demands of white society. Even as settler armies waged wars to clear Florida of its Native peoples in a demographic sense, its inherent geological conditions could not be removed from their association with the lifestyles of the Natives.

American soldier George Archibald McCall also admires the Seminoles' relationship to nature in an 1830 excerpt from Letters from the Frontier.

"The Seminole is certainly a shrude yet patient observer, and is wonderfully well-versed, practically, in astronomy and meteorology: he can calculate with more than ordinary accuracy the character of the weather twenty-four or even fourty-eight hours ahead." (1830)

Renowned naturalist John James Audubon offered a rare piece of sympathy to the peninsula's Natives in his 1834 book, Ornithological Biography:

"The poor dejected son of the woods, endowed with talents of the highest order, although rarely acknowledged by the proud usurpers of his native soil, has spent the night in fishing, and the morning in procuring the superb-feathered game of the swampy thickets; and with both he comes to offer them for our acceptance. Alas! thou fallen one, descendant of an ancient line of freeborn hunters, would that I could restore to thee thy birthright, they natural independence, the generous feelings that were once fostered in thy brave bosom. But the irrevocable deed is done, and I cna merely admire the perfect symmetry of his frame, as he dexterously throws on our deck the trouts and turkeys which he has captured." (1834)

Not everyone approved of what was becoming of Florida as the 19th century grew older. Some, including famous American author Ralph Waldo Emerson, expressed disdain for the moral failures of Floridians. In an 1827 journal entry about St. Augustine, he writes:

"Oldest town of Europeans in North America, full of ruins, chimneyless houses. Lazy people, housekeeping intolerably dear, and bad milk from swamp grass because all hay comes from the north. Forty miles from here is, nevertheless, the richest crop of grass growing untouched. Why? Because there is no scythe in St. Augustine, and if there were, no man who knows how to use one!" (1827)

Others countered such sentiments with an internal enterprise that drove them to work more to change their environment, largely for the supposed good of the white race. In his 1837 guidebook, The Territory of Florida, American lawyer John Lee Williams encourages northerners to migrate to the Sunshine State and toil away:

"Many Europeans, as well as inhabitants of the northern states, object to live in a slave holding country, and we must hold that slavery is an evil. There is not indeed so great a proportion of slaves here, as in the rest of the southern states; and in general, slaves, with us, are treated with great humanity. But we want industrious and enterprizing men and women to come among us, to set good examples, to prove that white men, although they may not bear the buring rays of the sun as well as negroes, yet that by order, system and economy, thay can accomplish more in one day, than a slave will accomplish in a week." (1837)

Though Florida's colonization was always racialized, Lee's call to action reveals the extent to white nationalist projects shaped the settlement of the peninsula.

As the Sunshine State titillated land developers and capitalists, it offered an unjust hand to its downtrodden minorities in both material conditions and status. While Indigenous numbers dwindled and enslaved Black people fought for freedom, the long-present population of drifting, raucus cowboys of British descent called "Crackers" slowly came to be regarded as native to the peninsula in the eyes of white upper classes [citation 168]. This represented a marked progression of the settler colonial project and its restructuring of the local racial geography.

In Washington Irving's 1855 book The Seminoles, the "Sleepy Hollow" author, despite having never visited Florida, writes of the interactions between Seminole chief Neamathla and state governor William P. Duval, a fictionalized version of the accounts of Irving's real friend. Though the author appears to show some sympathy for the Natives, his support for Indigenous displacement is also clear. This story's place in the archive, where few first-hand recollections from Indigenous and Black Floridians exist, exemplifies the amount of influence wealthy white Americans had over the portrayal of those they deemed "other." In "Origin of the White, the Red, and the Black Men: A Seminole Tradition," Irving writes his version of an 1818 speech delivered to Duval by Neamathla in protest of the US's insistence that Native children receive a white man's education:

"We have a tradition handed down from our forefathers, and we believe it, that the Great Spirit, when he undertook to make men, made the black man; it was his first attempt, and pretty well for a beginning; but he soon saw he had bungled; so he determined to try his hand again. He did so, and made the red man. He liked him much better than the black man, but still he was not exactly what he wanted. So he tried once more, and made the white man; and then he was satisfied. You see, therefore, that you were made last, and that is the reason I call you my youngest brother."

The legend goes on to say that the three races of men each received a box of tools that dictated their roles in society.

"From this it is clear that the Great Spirit intended the white man should learn to read and write; to understand all about the moon and stars, and to make every thing, even rum and whiskey. That the red man should be a first-rate hunter, and a mighty warrior, but he was not to learn anything from books, as the Great Spirit had not given him any; nor was he to make rum and whiskey, lest he should kill himself from drinking. As to the black man, as he had nothing but working-tools, it was clear he was to work for the white and red man, which he has continued to do. We must go according to the wishes of the Great Spirit, or we shall get into trouble. To know how to read and write, is very good for white men, but very bad for red men. It makes white men better, and red men worse. Some of the Creeks and Cherokees learnt to read and write, and they are the greatest rascals among all the Indians.... as [the nation at home] knew not what a treaty was, he held up the little piece of paper, and they looked under it, and lo! it covered a great extent of country, and they found that their brethren, by knowing how to read and write, had sold their houses, and their lands, and the graves of their fathers; and that the white man, by knowing how to read and write, had gained them. Tell our Great Father at Washington, therefore, that we are very sorry we cannot receive teachers among us; for reading and writing, though very good for white men, is very bad for Indians." (1855)

The accuracy of Irving's version of the Seminole origin story, however, should be questioned. Though this section was written based off an account from Duval himself about his conversation with Neamathla, there are other recollections of the same event that offer a different moral [citation]. An 1842 record of the speech instead wrote:

"Listen, father, and I will tell you how the Great Spirit made man, and how he gave to men of different colours the different employments that we find them engaged in. After the world was made it was solitary. It was very beautiful; the forests abounded in game and fruit: the great plains were covered with deer and elk, and buffalo, and the rivers were full of fish; there were many bears and beaver, and other fat animals, but there was no being to enjoy these good things. Then the Master of Life said, we will make man. Man was made, but when he stood up before his maker, he was white! The Great Spirit was sorry: he saw that the being he had made was pale and weak; he took pity on him, and therefore did not unmake him, but let him live. He tried again, for he was determined to make a perfect man, but in his endeavour to avoid making another white man, he went into the opposite extreme, and when the second being rose up, and stood before him, he was black I The Great Spirit liked the black man less than the white, and he shoved him aside to make room for another trial. Then it was that he made the red; and the red man pleased him." (1842)

In this version, the speaker appears much more concerned with the natural world around him beyond humanity. In both records the creator looks down upon the Black man and relegates him to a life of labor, providing valuable insight into the pervasiveness of anti-Blackness in the New World, even among supposed allies. The primary difference in the two accounts is that Irving's story posits white men as the ultimate and favorite creation of God. The other, recorded by M'Kenney and Hall in History of the Indian Tribes of North America, portrays the Native man as the creator's ultimate and favorite child. Irving's depiction of a Seminole origin myth that presupposes its Indigenous storytellers as white supremacists especially stands out in the context of the proud and valiant history of the Seminoles. Other accounts of the speech indicate that the most common narrative places the red man last and in divine favor [citation]. This points to a rearrangement of the truth on Irving's side and appears to be an attempt at promoting white dominance in his literature through the misrepresentation of the Natives as an awaredly-inferior and godforsaken people. His supposed sympathies for the Seminoles thus feel superficial.

Among these twisted representations of Florida's Native peoples, precious musical histories reveal the sentimentality of the Seminoles and their relationship to their surroundings. In the early 1930s, music ethnologist Frances Densmore visited the people and recorded their songs and stories on cylinder. Densmore relied primarily upon the aid of four individuals: Billie Stewart and Susie Tiger of the Cow Creek, Panther of the Cypress Swamp group, and William King of the Creek. In 1956, her studies were published as Seminole Music. The following recording by Susie Tiger, called Song of Removal, describes the forced migration of the Seminoles to Oklahoma from 1836 to 1840 [citation].

"They are taking us beyond Miami,
They are taking us beyond the Caloosa River,
They are taking us to the end of our tribe,
They are taking us to Palm Beach, coming back
beside Okeechobee Lake,
They are taking us to an old town in the west." (1956)

Susie Tiger's singing conveys a great sense of grief paired with a determination to keep the song alive. In the translated lyrics, the threat of forced movement westward serves as a non-descript, impending doom. A similar air of grief pervades the folktale relayed by Panther, The Opossum And Her Lost Baby.

"The story was told to Panther as a boy, 4 to 6 years of age. An opossum had a little baby. She was going somewhere and carried the baby along, all the time. The opossum found some wild potatoes and put the baby down while she dug the potatoes. She went away a little distance and every little while she called the baby, and it answered. When the opossum came back she found that someone had stolen the baby and taken it away. The answer had come from a frog, put where the baby had been. Then the opossum looked around an found somebody's tracks. She followed the tracks. She was lonesome and sang a song. She sang it four times, once with each of the stops that she made on her way to find the baby. There is only one word in the song and that is I-ya-ta-wa-kits-ko-tie, which was the baby's name.

She came to a house. Somebody was there and she asked if they had seen the baby. The person in the souse said "Yes." The opossum went in the direction indicated and on the road she met two people and asked them the same question. Then she had been to two places and met two people, and sang her "lonesome song" twice.

After a while she came to another place. In that place the baby had been hidden. There were four or five houses, some occupied and some empty. The opossum asked her question and somebody pointed to a house saying, "They got the baby in there." She went over, opened the door and found the baby inside. Somebody had killed a rattlesnake, cooked it, and given it to the baby to eat. The mother was angry and told them to take it away. She took the baby and started home. She killed a little fawn, ate some of the meat, and gave some to the baby. They stayed there a while. That made three times she sang the song.

A wolf come to that place smelled the meat. The opossum lied and she said she had no meat, but the wolf smelled the meat. The wolf got a bow and arrow. Then the opossum was afraid she would be killed. She went up a big tree, took the baby with her and stayed up in the top of the tree. The baby died up there in the tree. That was the fourth time she sang the song.

The old opossum came down and walked away. She found a skunk who was her friend and went home with the skunk. They lay down together and sang. They sang another "lonesome song" and then they both died. This is their last song." (1956)[citation]

The second song conveys feelings of maternal struggle and the deathly grip of familial grief. Just as Susie Tiger sang sombre heirloom melodies, mother opossum sang in company to try to reunite her family and express her sorrow until her eventual death. Both clips reflect a culture with long-term, intensive, and communal mourning practices, further emphasizing the devastation of the Seminoles' loss.

When peoples care for those who are not like them, out of great grief can come powerful solidarity. Many Black Americans regarded the Seminoles with great reverence for their fight against the white man and the aid they provided to runaways, who for decades had been welcomed with open arms to join the Natives when fleeing slavery. Though, like Irving, he never visited Florida, Kentuckian Albery Allson Whitman praised the bravery and sacrifice of the Seminoles in aiding Black maroons in his poem, The Rape of Florida.

"He could not be enslaved–would not enslave
The meanest exile that his friendship sued.
Brave for himself, defending others brave,
The matchless hero of his time he stood,–
His noble hear with freedom's love imbued,
The strong apostle of Humanity!
Mid forests wild and habitations rude,
He made his bed of glory by the sea;
The friend of Florida and man, there let him be!" (1884)

This poem harkens to a powerful sense of unity between Black and Indigenous Floridians, born out of a mutual struggle for survival, autonomy, and joy. Since the peninsula's first settlement to the modern day, Black people living in Florida have been subjected to disproportionately extreme poverty with little government intervention. However, this did not prevent people from creating flourishing communties. In the 1928 essay, How It Feels To Be Colored Me, renowned author Zora Neale Hurston describes some of the conflicting feelings of growing up in the oldest incorporated Black town in the US: Eatonville, Florida.

"I remember the very day that I became colored. Up to my thirteenth year I lived in the little Negro town of Eatonville, Florida. It is exclusively a colored town. The only white people I knew passed through the town coming or going to Orlando. The native whites rode dusty horses, the Northern tourists chugged down the sandy village road in automobiles. The town knew the Southerners and never stopped cane chewing when they passed. But the Northerners were something else again. They were peered at cautiously from behind curtains by the timid. The more venturesome would come out on the porch to watch them go past and got just as much pleasure out of the tourists as the tourists got out of the village."

"Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the granddaughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me. Slavery is sixty years in the past. The operation was successful and the patient is doing well, thank you. The terrible struggle that made me an American out of a potential slave said "On the line!" The Reconstruction said "Get set!"; and the generation before said "Go!" I am off to a flying start and must not halt in the stretch to look behind and weep. Slavery is the price I paid for civilization, and the choice was not with me. It is a bully adventure and worth all that I have paid through my ancestors for it. No one on earth ever had a greater chance for glory. The world to be won and nothing to be lost. It is thrilling to think–to know that for any act of mine, I shall get twice as much praise or twice as much blame. It is quite exciting to hold the center of the national stage, with the spectators not knowing whether to laugh or to weep." (1928)

Aware of the doubled-pressure of the world's gaze upon her as a Black girl in the South, the narrator basks in the triumphs of her ancestors. She approaches life boldly and jovially, ignoring the prescriptions set out for her by a world that tries to push shame upon her. She claims her Americanness firmly in juxtaposition with the alienating stares of white tourists. Like the Natives before her, she reckons with the dehumanization forced upon her and uses what agency she has to fight back against it. As in older accounts of the pursuit of leisure and vitality on the peninsula, the disenfranchised Floridian nearly becomes an item for the wealthy and transient to oggle, but asserts difference so fiercely that the self becomes reclaimed.

After walking one thousand miles from Indianapolis to the Gulf of Mexico in 1867, famous environmentalist John Muir stumbled into Florida awestruck. In A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf, Muir describes his encounter with a rugged group of men, who received the sort of animalistic characterization that the imperial imagination had typically reserved for Indigenous people:

"Near the middle of the forenoon I came to a shanty where a party of loggers were getting out long pines for ship spars. They were the wildest of all the white savages I have met. The long-haired ex-guerillas of the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina are uncivilized fellows; but for downright barbarism these Florida loggers excel. Neverless, they gave me a portion of their yellow pork and hominy without either apparent hospitality or a grudge, and I was glad to escape to the forest again." (1916)

Muir's perception of the white loggers as "savages" mirrors upper class attitudes towards crackers that flourished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The renewed focus on distinctions between types of white men points to a split in the unity of monolithic whiteness that had been previously forced together by the pressure of colonial warfare. No longer as firmly united against a single racialized enemy, class divisions based on locality became increasingly, glaringly visible. With the Indigenous person's ability to thrive in Florida constantly under attack and early capitalism showing its influence, poor Southern whites became an increasingly easy target for proper society to deem primitive.[citation FlReader] This is not to suggest that these men were subjected to the same level of violence as their Black and Indigenous neighbors. Rather, it appears that the rapid cultural and economic shifts that took place in the Sunshine State after the Civil War created new vacuums and influxes of power capable of restructuring hierarchies and lowering a new demographic towards the bottom of the pecking order.

Pushing back against the pretentious inclinations of Northerners, author Silvia Sunshine engages with questions of whiteness and class in Petals Plucked from Sunny Climes:

"The above is a correct description of the Northern crackers, of which some scribblers seem to have lost sight in their unfeeling efforts to abuse the South, and impress the world with the idea that crackers and poor whites are entirely of Southern origin, and only found in that locality, they being the outgrowth of a slave oligarchy. That indigenous class of persons called Southern crackers receive names according to the locality.... These crackers have few local attachments, moving twice in a year does not inconvenience them; indeed, no earthly state of existence can be imagined freer from care and less fraught with toil than the one they lead. When settled, they are not fastidious about their habitations, as the mild climate does not require close quarters; a good shelter will subserve their purpose." (1880)

Here, once again, crackers are attributed a certain amount of Native-ness in relation to the peninsula that other whites lack, while actual Indigenous people face violence for appearing too Native to a place. The repeated reference to the supposed Indigineity of the crackers across different sources points to the success of the white man's pursuit of establishing himself as the norm. At the same time, the Seminoles were forced into increasingly strained living situations, as mentioned in Tales of Southern Rivers by Pearl Zane Grey:

"It was the home of wild fowl and beast and alligator, and the elusive Seminole. Gazing across the waving sea of grass, I had a conception of the Seminole's hatred of all that pertained to the white man. The Everglade Indian must love this inaccessilbe, inhospitable wilderness that was neither wholly land nor water. He was alone there. No white man could follow him. The last three hundred of his race would die there, and perish from the earth."

Between 1881 and 1926, Florida underwent a major land boom that motivated developers and businessmen to advertise Floridian life in full swing [citation FR 189]. While already popular as a temporary tourist location, the Sunshine State came to be advertised as a beneficial place for permanent settlement, especially among retirees.

In Daniel Brinton's popular travel resource, A Guidebook of Florida and the South, he promotes the health benefits of the peninsula's gentle climate like many before him.

"With these, and a hundred similar warnings before us, we are safe in saying that in many cases entire relaxation from business and two or three winters in a warm climate about the age of sixty, will add ten years to life."

"I conclude therefore that the most equable climate of the United States is on the south-eastern coast of Florida." (1869)

Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, mocks the attitudes of tourists in her book Palmetto Leaves:

"It is not to be denied that full half of the tourists and travellers that come to Florida return intensely disappointed, and even disgusted.... Now tourists and travellers generally come with their heads full of certain romantic ideas of waving palms, orange-groves, flowers, and fruit, all bursting forth in tropical abundance; and, in consequence, they go through Florida with disappointment at every step."

She later offers a different characterization of the peninsula by personifying it:

"For ourselves, we are getting reconciled to a sort of tumble-down, wild, picnicky kind of life,–this general happy-go-luckiness which Florida inculcates. If we painted her, we should not represent her as a neat, trim, damsel, with starched linen cuffs and collar: she would be a brunette, dark but comely, with gorgeous tissues, a general disarray and dazzle, and with a sort of jolly untidiness, free, easy, and joyous." (1873)

With these juxtaposed statements, Stowe derides tourists for expecting too much from the Sunshine State and suggests that its splendor lies in its relaxed, surrendipitously chipper demeanor. Author Edward King also reflects on the contradictions between Florida's imaginary and its reality in his book, The Southern States of North America: Florida.

"Pause with me at the gateway of the great peninsula, and reflect for a moment upon its history. Fact and fancy wander here hand in hand; the airy chronicles of the ancient fathers hover over the confines of the impossible. The austere Northerner and the cynical European have been heard to murmur incredulously at the tales of the modern writers who grow enthusiastic upon the charms of our new winter paradise. Yet, what of fiction could exceed in romantic interest the history of this venerable state?" (1875)

The New Deal era, government-sponsored Federal Writers' Project put forward their popular travel resource, Florida: A Guide, in 1939. The anonymously written guidebook reflects on the contradictions of the peninsula through the eyes of its guests:

"To the visitor, Florida is at once a pageant of extravagance and a land of pastoral simplicity, a flood-lighted stage of frivolty and a behind-the-scenes struggle for existence." (1939)

Similarly, the authors muse that:

"The evolution of a tourist into a permanent resident consists of a struggle to harmonize misconceptions and preconceptions of Florida with reality." (1939)

Even when one resigns themself to a simple life, Florida seems to demand dialectics from its residents constantly. It proves difficult, even to Floridians, to conjure forward a singular and sensible idea of what defines and moves the Sunshine State. As Marjory Stoneman Douglas said in The Everglades: River of Grass,

"To try to present it whole is to find oneself lost in the sense of continuing change." (1947)

Regardless of whether or not one tried to make sense of Florida or merely tried to make a few cents off of it, by the middle of the century the lifestyle offered by the Sunshine State was the ultimate embodiment of the American dream.

The peninsula's growth did not occur evenly around the state. While many northern counties remained relatively stagnant, Miami-Dade County saw its population nearly double in the 1950s. Recognizable and exotic, the City of Miami became one of Florida's biggest draws [Mormino 25].

Florida's population increased rapidly in the second half of the 20th century as Disney World opened, the American middle class had money to spend, and an influx of immigrants from all over the world, namely Cuba, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Haiti, and other countries in the Caribbean and Latin America. Many of these new residents came to Florida as a gateway into the mainland imperial core after experiencing geopolitical instability due to the consequences of colonialism and US intervention. In the ethnograph Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams, Gary Mormino writes:

"The presence of a Cuban exile community and the establishment of the extraordinarily successful amusement park triggered new explosions: the racial tensions; land speculation and investment, the construction of new theme parks and hotels, and massive urban sprawl. Cubans in Miami and Disney World in Orlando transcended reality and became the images of their respective cities." (2005)

More than ever, the Sunshine State became a hotbed for swirling social pressures that built off of the tensions of the past few hundred years. Of the physical changes that occurred, architectural critic Beth Dunlop wrote:

"Yet on U.S. 19 north of New Port Richey it is possible to see what Florida is becoming everywhere–an incessant cacophony of strip shopping centers and signs, bowling alleys, supermarkets, drug stores, discount stores all sitting behind vast asphalt parking lots." (1987)

With the landscape and expectations for entertainment ever shifting in tandem, the Sunshine State was at the will of tourists' desires. The sheer volume of people visiting the peninsula meant that public infrastructure became dedicated to supporting mass tourism. Always trying to increase the thrill, entrepreneurs created new attractions that pushed the limits of Florida's reality. Faux Main Streets and African big cats in drive-through safari parks offered visitors a chance to engage directly in the manufactured fantasies that have haunted the peninsula's real landscape since colonization. [Mormino] Mormino writes:

"Florida's amusement of the billions now occurs in insulated, air-conditioned, passive capsules, rarely requiring face-to-place relationships. Florida seems incidental. In a world of "total experiences, Florida is becoming a backdrop against which tourists create digital postcards of themselves being hugged by a robot." (2005)

As the Miami lifestyle gained notoriety, the state came to be associated with debauchery, scantily clad women, and law-flouting. In the 1980s, tourism officials put out new advertisements playing on these tropes.

"I Need It Bad" Florida Advertisement (1980)

These advertisements reflect the fun, sexy atmosphere that Florida projected to its potential visitors. The efforts of capitalists reveal the extent to which Sunshine State deliberately attempted to prolong the mystical, rejuvenating reputation it held since the 16th century. The peninsula's relationship to travel kept it heavily associated with tourism, but the chaotic airs of transience and fantasy became increasingly emphasized. Mormino writes:

"The consequences document a state and society living beyond their capacities.... Tourism has inflicted a cruel and ironic dialectic upon Florida: the more people that come to enjoy lakes, rivers, and beaches, the less appealing and natural the places become."[119]

An attitude of disdain towards tourists grew in the 80s and 90s. Bumper stickers with slogans such as "Welcome to Florida, Now Go Home" and "If It's Tourist Season, Why Can't We Kill Em?" illuminate the deep resentment sitting in the belly of many Floridians who have repeatedly found their conditions under the influence of wealthy outsiders.

However, even the snarkiest of bumper stickers could not deter tourists from wanting to participate in the raucous adventures of Florida. In the late 90s and early 2000s, music and pop culture only bolstered these desires as they painted the state as an endless party. Will Smith's 1997 song Miami conveys this exact sentiment: