Category Florida History
Flashback Friday: Sunshine State Parkway in the early 1960’s
Florida’s Turnpike, originally known as the Sunshine State Parkway opened in 1957 spanning 109 miles from the future Golden Glades Interchange north of Miami to Fort Pierce. It was the first limited-access road in the southeast United States outside of large urban areas. Since Florida was becoming a tourist haven, after World War II the decision […]
Flashback Friday: St Augustine turns 450 years old – a quick historical narrative of the city’s importance
Last month marked the 450th Anniversary of the founding of St Augustine – The oldest continues settlement in what is now the United States of America. Founded by Pedro Menéndez de Aviles in September 1565, the city became a leading center of culture and commerce in the Spanish-held New World. The city was the Capital […]
Flashback Friday: 40 years ago – Hurricane Eloise hits the Pandhandle
This week in 1975, Hurricane Eloise became the first Major Hurricane to strike Florida since Hurricane Betsy in 1965. The storm made landfall around Panama City as a Category 3 storm. More on Eloise from Wikipedia.
Flashback Friday: Hurricane Betsy 50 years ago
In 1965 this past week, southern Florida was ravaged by Hurricane Betsy’s landfall. The Category 3 storm did a number on south Florida. Here is a look back at the storm from Wikipedia: Beginning on September 7, intermittent squalls associated with Betsy’s outer rainbands began affecting the coast, producing gusts in excess of 60 mph […]
Flashback Friday: 1935 Labor Day Hurricane, “Murder at Matecumbe”
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 storm to ever hit the US mainland. This week we commemorated the 80th Anniversary of the horrible event. One of the great tragedies of the Labor Day storm was the death of […]
Flashback Friday: Hurricane Erin
This month, twenty years ago the Treasure and Space Coasts were threatened by a storm out in the Atlantic. Erin represented the first post-Andrew panic on Florida’s East Coast and then hit the Panhandle just months before the much more powerful and destructive Opal. I had come down to Jupiter for the Florida Young Democrats […]
Flashback Friday: First British siege of Pensacola ends
On this day in 1707, the first siege of Pensacola was lifted. The town was destroyed by the British and the Crown’s Creek Indian allies but Spanish rule persisted due to the defense of Fort San Carlos de Austria . This was part of the hostilities associated with Queen Anne’s War. We discussed the siege of St […]
Thursday Bookshelf: Florida’s Hurricane History
With Tropical Storm Danny churning out in the Atlantic Ocean (I am old enough to recall well a previous Hurricane Danny threaten New Orleans 30 years ago) this seemed like a good time to discuss the long history of recorded Hurricanes and the State of Florida. Florida’s Hurricane History by Jay Barnes was published in the […]
Flashback Friday: When Reapportionment meant the most
This week’s redistricting Special Session is the latest in a long run of map drawing and redrawing exercises the legislature has had to undertake since the Justice Department began strong enforcement of the Voting Rights Act in 1991 vis-a-vis minority-access and majority-minority districts. Prior to 1968, Florida’s legislature was badly apportioned. While the state had […]
Flashback Friday: Eastern to Florida in 1972
With the recent rebirth of Eastern Airlines, nostalgia about carrier that was during my childhood the largest airline in the free world has resurfaced. Eastern Airlines was from the 1920’s until the 1980’s the primary airline transporting people to/from Florida In the days of airline regulation, Eastern was awarded the bulk of lucrative north/south routes […]
The Florida Squeeze 