The
first European sighting
of Florida, just six years after
Christopher Columbus reached the
New World, is believed to have
been made by John and Sebastian
Cabot in 1498, when they spotted
what is now Cape Florida, on Key
Biscayne in Miami. At the time,
the area's 100,000 inhabitants
formed several distinct
tribes
: the Timucua across northern
Florida, the Calusa around the
southwest and Lake Okeechobee, the
Apalachee in the Panhandle and the
Tequesta along the southeast
coast.
In 1513, a Spaniard, Juan
Ponce de León , sighted land
during Pascua Florida , the
Festival of the Flowers, and named
what he saw La Florida - or
"Land of Flowers." Eight
years later he returned with a
mandate from the Spanish king to
conquer and colonize the
territory, the first of several
Spanish incursions prompted by
rumors of gold hidden in the north
of the region. When it became
clear that Florida did not harbor
stunning riches, interest waned;
but the arrival of French
Huguenots in 1562 forced the
Spanish into a more determined
effort at settlement. Three years
later, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés
founded St Augustine - the
longest continuous site of
European habitation on the
continent. In 1586 St Augustine
was razed by a British naval
bombardment led by Francis Drake.
The ensuing bloody confrontation
for control of North America was
eventually settled when the
British captured the crucial
Spanish possession of Havana, and
Spain willingly parted with
Florida to get it back. By this
time, indigenous Floridians had
been largely wiped out by disease.
Florida's Native American
population now largely comprised
disparate tribes arriving from the
west, collectively known as the Seminoles
, who were generally left
undisturbed in the inland areas.
Following American
independence, when Florida was
returned to Spain, the US began to
think in terms of controlling the
state. In 1814 a US general,
Andrew Jackson, marched south,
killing hundreds of Indians and
triggering the First Seminole
War - on the pretext of
subduing the Seminole but with the
actual intention of taking the
region. Spain formally ceded
Florida to the US in 1819,
with Jackson sworn in as Florida's
first American governor and
Tallahassee selected as the new
administrative center. Eleven
years later, the Act of Indian
Removal decreed that all
Native Americans in the eastern US
should be transferred to
reservations in the Midwest. Most
Seminole were determined to stay
and the Second Seminole War
broke out, with the Indians
steadily driven south, away from
the fertile lands of central
Florida and into the Everglades,
where they eventually agreed to
remain.
Florida became a state
on March 3, 1845, coinciding with
the prosperity brought by the
railroads. As a member of the
Confederacy during the Civil
War , Florida's primary
contribution was the provision of
food - a foretaste of its postwar
economic role after being
readmitted to the Union. As
northern speculators began to
invest in Florida, the country's
newspapers extolled the curative
virtues of its climate. These
early efforts to promote Florida
as a tourist destination
brought in the wintering rich:
Henry Flagler opened luxury
resorts on the northeast coast and
extended his Florida East Coast
Railroad south, giving birth to
communities such as Palm Beach.
Henry Plant connected his own
railroad to Tampa, turning it into
a thriving port city. Florida's
climate enabled citrus fruits to
be grown during the winter and
sold to the cooler north, and the
state became a major beef
producer. After World War I, it
seemed that everyone in America
wanted a piece of Florida, and
chartered trains brought in
thousands of eager buyers. But
most deals were on paper only, and
in 1926 the banks began to
default. The Wall Street Crash
then made paupers of the
millionaires whose investments had
helped shape the state.
What saved Florida was World
War II . Thousands of troops
arrived to guard the coastline,
empty tourist hotels provided
ready-made barracks, and - most
importantly - the soldiers got a
taste of Florida that would entice
many of them to return. In the
mid-Sixties, the state government
bent over backward to help the
Disney Corporation turn a sizable
slice of central Florida into Walt
Disney World , the biggest
theme park ever known. Its
enormous commercial success helped
solidify Florida's place in the
international tourist market:
directly or indirectly, tourism
makes up 20 percent of the total
state economy.
Behind the optimistic facade,
however, lie many problems
. There's a broadening gap between
the relative liberalism of the big
cities and the arch-conservatism
of the rural Bible Belt: while
Miami promotes its multicultural
makeup, the Ku Klux Klan holds
picnics in the Panhandle. Gun laws
remain notoriously lax, and the
multimillion-dollar drug trade
shows few signs of abating - at
least a quarter of the cocaine
entering the US is said to arrive
via Florida. Racial issues
continue, too, with tension on
several fronts: between
Anglo-Americans and nouveau riche
Cubans, blacks and whites, blacks
and Hispanics, police and the
inner-city poor. However,
increased protection of the
state's natural resources
has been a more positive feature
of the last decade and impressive
amounts of land are under state
control - overall, wildlife is
less threatened now than at any
time since white settlers first
arrived.
The 2000 presidential election
fiasco brought unwelcome attention
to the state. Both Gov. George
Bush of Texas (Republican) and
Vice President Al Gore (Democrat)
needed Florida's 25 electoral
votes to win. Bush led by a few
hundred votes on the morning after
the election in unofficial
returns. For five weeks top
lawyers on both slides slugged it
out in the courts. Disputes raged
over such issues as whether
ballots with "hanging chads"
(partially punched out holes)
should be counted. Ultimately, the
US Supreme Court issued a ruling
that effectively halted the
recounts, and Bush won the state
by 537 votes out of some six
million cast.
