Category Florida History
Remembering the 1952 Florida gubernatorial election – part 1
Editors note: With 2018 a Gubernatorial election year, noted Florida historian and author Robert Buccellato has written a series on past gubernatorial campaigns. We ran part 1 of his series detailing Dan McCarty’s historic 1952 win, the first by a south Floridian today. Part II on Governor McCarty will run later this week. By Robert Buccellato In honor […]
50th Anniversary of MLK Jr. Death: A history of political racism in Florida from 1916 onward
This week in commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King we will be re-running some select pieces on Civil Rights that we have featured in the five plus years this site has been publishing. The first is a rerun of a 2017 piece. Editors note: With the recent legislative […]
Flashback Friday: Fort Lauderdale Hurricane
Seventy years ago this month a Category 4 storm slammed into southeastern Florida. The storm since referred to as the “Fort Lauderdale Hurricane” approached the southeast coast of the state as a Category 5 but weakened to a strong Category 4 just offshore around Bimini. The storm killed only 17 people in the state far […]
Flashback Friday: The Keys, the railroad and tragic hurricanes
Following Hurricane Irma and its impact on the Keys we look back at the building of the Overseas Railroad, the 1906 Keys Hurricane and of course the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane. The building of the Overseas Railroad was one of great engineering feats in Florida’s history – in fact it might actually be one of […]
Flashback Friday: History of the Florida Turnpike – Central Florida (Part 2 of 3)
Part I covering southeast Florida is here When the Turnpike was originally proposed in he late 1940’s the road was supposed to travel thirty five miles east of Orlando. Thomas B. Manual, a Broward County Commissioner and chair of the Turnpike Commission sought to link southeast Florida with the First Coast destinations of Jacksonville […]
Lesson from Irma – much of Florida cannot handle a big storm
“We didn’t dodge a bullet, we dodged a cannonball” – Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine to WFOR-TV Monday AM Kudos to Governor Rick Scott and Emergency Management in the Keys and Southwest Florida. Kudos to those municipal and county officials like the aforementioned Mayor Levine, Coral Springs City Commissioner Dan Daley and Tampa Mayor […]
Flashback Friday: Hurricane Andrew series parts 1-5 plus Bryan Norcross interview
Due to Hurricane Irma we won’t have our latest installment of our month-long series on Hurricane Andrew this week. For those of you who have missed it, here are the earlier pieces of our series which is more pertinent the next few days than ever. By Miami National Weather Service Office Part I: 1966 […]
Remembering Florida’s strongest ever Hurricane
Editors note: This article originally ran in 2015 on the 75th Anniversary of the Labor Day storm. We are rerunning today since comparisons have been made between Hurricane Irma and this storm The National Hurricane Center last year reclassified the 1935 Keys Labor Day Storm, one of the greatest tragedies in Florida’s History as the strongest […]
Book Review – My Hurricane Andrew Story by Bryan Norcross
Hurricane Andrew’s fury was witnessed by South Dade residents and concerned citizens all over the region. But nobody has a more authoritative and credible voice on all matters Andrew and for that matter Atlantic basin Hurricanes in general than Bryan Norcross. As the most prominent television meteorologist in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale TV market for two decades, […]
Flashback Friday: Florida’s Turnpike at 60 (Part 1 of 3)
Editors Note: This Part I of a series on the Florida Turnpike which turned 60 earlier this year. This article focuses on South Florida. All photos of memorabilia in this series are from my personal collection. Florida’s history is dotted by conflicts between urban and rural areas, north and south and the inherent tension the growth […]
The Florida Squeeze 