Roads & Routes

Vast, mysterious, and inaccessible for centuries, the Everglades is famous worldwide. Much of this unique landscape is protected within Everglades National Park, as are exotically named places such as Flamingo, Ten Thousand Islands, Florida Bay, Anhinga Trail, Shark Valley, and Pahayokee. Dedicated in 1947, the park receives nearly a million visitors in most years who come to experience the Everglades and its alligators, crocodiles, Florida panthers, anhingas, roseate spoonbills, and egrets. It was egrets—or rather, their courtship plumes decorating ladies’ hats—that jump-started the movement to save the wetlands as a park. The Everglades was home to archaic people for thousands of years and also holds the stories of the indigenous Tequesta, Spanish and British colonialists, Mikasuki-speaking Native Americans (and the soldiers who sought to expel them), pioneer settlers, activists who created the park, residents of south Florida, and generations of visitors who have experienced the tropical wilderness of Everglades National Park.

Florida in the late 1800s was a paradise waiting to be discovered. During this period, two visionary tycoons of the Gilded Age set out on separate ventures that would transform the Sunshine State from America's last frontier into a destination for the rich and famous. The grand hotels that Henry M. Flagler and Henry B. Plant opened at their planned resort sites offered a fantasy stay surrounded by all the accoutrements expected by sophisticated, Gilded Age patrons. Florida's Grand Hotels from the Gilded Age provides a look at these magnificent structures during their glory years, along with the fashionable entertainment and social and recreational pastimes that engaged their gilded guests.

The Florida Keys possess a staggering wealth of lighthouses--nine in all, from the remote iron light at Fowey Rocks to classic brick structures at Key West and Loggerhead Key. In the 1820s, the US government began constructing lighthouses to aid mariners navigating the dangerous Florida Reef. While some of the original lights were subsequently destroyed in dramatic circumstances, most that followed, including Carysfort Reef, Alligator Reef, Sombrero Key, Sand Key, and American Shoal, survived intense tropical weather and even major hurricanes. Among the lighthouse keepers were remarkable women who succeeded in a profession usually reserved for men.

With this powerful, evocative new book, St. Petersburg residents Jon Wilson and Rosalie Peck present an informative narrative that explores the history of St. Petersburg, Florida's most vibrant African American neighborhood: 22nd Street South or "the deuces."

Throughout the city's history, no other area has personified strength for the African American community like this segregation-era thoroughfare. A haven during the brutal Jim Crow years, 22nd Street South was a place where prominent businessmen and community leaders were the role models and residents and neighbors looked out for one another. The close-knit community encouraged strong, positive values even as its members were treated as second-class citizens in the wider world. Authors Wilson and Peck tell the story of this unique district and how its people and events contributed to and helped to shape the history of St. Petersburg in the context of the greater South and the Civil Rights Movement.

The Ocala National Forest, founded on November 24, 1908, by Pres. Theodore Roosevelt, is the oldest national forest in the eastern continental United States.

The forest is one of Central Florida's last remaining expanses of forested lands with magnificent palms, towering live oaks, and the largest sand pine scrub population in the world, as well as containing a number of major natural springs, including Salt Springs, Silver Glen, Alexander, and Juniper Run. In addition to wilderness areas for visitors seeking simplicity and solitude, the forest has visitor centers, nature trails, and a section of the Florida Trail.Images of America: Ocala National Forestis filled with fascinating stories and exciting facts on the history of the steamboats, logging, trails, movie sets, Cracker cowboys, modern conservation efforts, and more.

Biscayne National Park protects the larger portion of south Florida's Biscayne Bay, a uniquely tropical lagoon harboring crocodiles, manatees, dolphins, and Caribbean fish. Tropical trees cover its islands, while the world's fourth-longest coral reef sits offshore. Native Americans lived here thousands of years ago; the Spanish held it for 200 years. Hundreds of ships foundered on the reef, fueling a lucrative wrecking industry. In the late 1800s, hardy homesteaders created an agricultural and fishing community. In the 1920s and 1930s, it became a playground for the newly rich and famous. Bracketed by Miami and Key Biscayne to the north and Key Largo to the south, the nearby population eventually grew to over 2.5 million residents and over 14 million annual visitors. To protect these unique natural and historical resources and to assure its enjoyment by future generations, a half century ago, the federal government created Biscayne National Monument, which later became Biscayne National Park.

The search began in 1946 for a location to conduct long-range missile tests. Cape Canaveral was chosen in part due to a nearby deactivated military base that could support a long-range proving ground for test firing missiles. The base, originally known as Banana River Naval Air Station, was eventually renamed Patrick Air Force Base in honor of a distinguished Army general. Today, Patrick is part of Air Force Space Command, and it is operated by the 45th Space Wing that also oversees launch facilities at nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station with the vision of "World's Premier Gateway to Space."

Ten houses of refuge, unique to Florida's east coast, were constructed by the US Life-Saving Service between 1876 and 1886. When ships traveling along the almost uninhabited coast were grounded or wrecked on reefs, survivors often made it to land but had no way to reach civilization. House of refuge keepers and their families provided food and shelter to victims of shipwrecks. The keepers' lives were monotonous but punctuated with the excitement of an occasional shipwreck. The US Life-Saving Service provided the framework on which the east coast of Florida developed. With the establishment of the US Coast Guard in 1915, the Life-Saving Service houses of refuge became Coast Guard stations.

The first orange groves, planted in St. Augustine in the 1500s by Ponce de León, were the precursor to what would become an integral part of Florida's identity.

Orange groves slowly spread across the state, inspiring horticultural and manufacturing ingenuity. Discover the story behind Deland's eccentric "citrus wizard'? Lue Gim Gong, the rise and fall of smuggler Jesse Fish and the silver-tongued politician William J. Howey, who made his fortune selling plots of groveland through the 1920s. Celebrate the heyday of orange tourism and the farmers who weathered freezes, floods and citrus greening. Join author Erin Thursby as she explores the history of the Sunshine State's most famous crop.

Sporting the second-longest coastline in the United States, Florida has over 8,000 miles of sparkling beaches and waterfront property. This valuable
landscape and the region's position between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico made Florida key in the early expansion of American trade routes, but the state's several capes and dangerous reefs, rocks, and shoals made travel quite perilous to unwary mariners. When commerce and traffic began to grow between ports on the East Coast and along the Gulf of Mexico in the nineteenth century, it became necessary to construct aids to navigation along the state's long and treacherous coast. Lighthouses were the solution. Constructed in a variety of styles and sizes, Florida's lighthouses were erected on what, at the time, were some of the most desolate regions of the southeastern United States and included lonely offshore islands. Manned and inhabited by vigilant keepers and their families, these towers illuminated the dark seas and provided the beacon that guided lost travelers. Large brick structures watched over St. Augustine, Pensacola, and Ponce de Leon Inlet; iron skeletons towered over Crooked River and Hillsboro Inlet; and screwpile lighthouses stood as sentinels in the waters off the Florida Keys.

The beacon of the historic Cape St. George Lighthouse still guides mariners into Apalachicola Bay. Founded in 1831, the town of Apalachicola took its name from Creek Indians, to whom it signified a land of friendly people. Sheltered from the Gulf of Mexico by a string of barrier islands, the port flourished as the only site in Florida on a river that is navigable for over 300 miles to the fall line at Columbus, Georgia, Apalachicola's sister city. Generations of lighthouse keepers were bound to St. George Island and its great bay by an intense sense of duty to sustain seagoing commerce and a love for a place where they could raise their families in freedom. When the foundation washed away in 2005 after a very active hurricane season and a final surge from Hurricane Wilma, residents took action to salvage and rebuild the historic lighthouse. Visitors may still climb the lighthouse tower, surrounded by bricks that were first laid in 1852.

For most people in Southwest Florida, the name Buckingham is just one more dot on a map--a rural area east of U.S. Interstate 75. But for a few years, it was so much more. Starting in 1942, it was the site of the Buckingham Army Air Field--home to some 16,000 men and women supporting the United States' World War II efforts. Airplanes roared in the skies over Lee County and reflected off the azure waters of the Gulf of Mexico as tens of thousands of young men trained as aerial gunners. Learning to target and bring down enemy aircraft with their guns was critical to America's success in both the European and Pacific theaters. On the ground, trucks rumbled across the mammoth base, soldiers marched in review under the hot Florida sun, and an entire town sprang up on what was once swampland. Barracks were built, along with stores, nightclubs, churches, and even a hospital with its own baby ward. Today the memories of Buckingham Army Air Field can be found hiding in plain sight, including a working airport that was once the heart of the base.

Originally just a thoroughfare connecting St. Petersburg with Pass-a-Grille, the area on St. Petersburg Beach immediately south of the Corey Causeway would, in time, become a destination of its own. As Florida recovered from the Great Depression, real estate developers the Upham Company carefully turned a swampy and mosquito-infested property into a successful commercial district, eventually to be called St. Pete Beach's Downtown. Over the years, many businesses would come and go, but several of the earliest continue into the 21st century, and the offices of the largest municipality on Pinellas County's barrier islands are now located there.

Quirky, unique, and unexpected, the history of Ermony Key comes to life in rare historic images.

Egmont Key has been a sentinel for ships entering Tampa Bay from the Gulf of Mexico for hundreds of years. Early European explorers recognized the island's strategic location. Its story reflects major events in the history of the United States and Florida, as the island played a role in the Seminole Wars, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War and World Wars I and II. Its lighthouse, now automated, is still a beacon for ships. For many years, people have enjoyed the beaches of Egmont Key, walked the red brick ""roads to nowhere"" and explored the ruins of Fort Dade. Authors Don and Carol Thompson aim to foster an appreciation of the uniqueness and beauty of Egmont Key, as well as an understanding of its place in history.