history · 7 min
The Storm That Killed the Railroad
On Labor Day 1935 the strongest hurricane ever to strike the United States crossed the Upper Keys, drowned the veterans' camps, wrecked the rescue train and ended Flagler's railroad to Key West.
Editorial
The Dispatch
The writing behind the collection. Florida's history, culture, and the people still making things by hand.
History
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history · 7 min
How Tarpon Springs Became the Sponge Capital
A Philadelphia businessman, a sponge buyer from Leonidio and 500 Greek divers turned a river town into the largest sponge port in America, until the beds died.
history · 7 min
The Pencil Mills of Cedar Key
How a Gulf island cut the cedar for America's pencils, and the morning in 1896 that ended it.
history · 7 min
The Royal Poinciana, the Largest Wooden Hotel Ever Built
Henry Flagler's Palm Beach hotel took 1,000 men nine months to raise in 1893 and a crew of 102 unemployed men over a year to pull down.
history · 7 min
The Lectors of Ybor City
The readers Tampa's cigar rollers hired and paid themselves, and the November morning in 1931 when the platforms came out.
history · 7 min
What Happened to Sanlando Springs
The Longwood swimming park sold tickets from 1926 to 1970, then became a gated subdivision; the spring behind the clubhouse still runs at the rate the postcards claimed.
history · 7 min
The Last Can of Concentrate
Florida invented frozen orange juice in a Winter Haven lab in 1945. This spring the company that made it famous stopped making it, and the groves behind it are nearly gone.
history · 7 min
The Trees That Build the Coast
How red, black, and white mangroves made Florida's shoreline, and why the state nearly cut them all down.
history · 6 min
The Road That Drained a Swamp
How the Tamiami Trail crossed the Everglades in 1928, and the river it quietly cut in two.
Culture
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News
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news · 6 min read
Is Florida Still the Orange State?
By act of the Legislature, three times over. By the numbers, California grows the oranges and Brazil squeezes the juice. A short answer to a question the license plate raises.
news · 9 min read
Why Florida's Springs Are Losing Flow
Poe Springs stopped this summer. Rainbow and Ichetucknee are running below any full year in their records. What the state's own gauges and water districts say about where the water went.
news · 18 min
The River They Put Back
In the 1960s Florida straightened the Kissimmee into a ditch. Then it spent thirty years and close to a billion dollars undoing the work. The birds came back before the bulldozers left.
news · 9 min
Blue Spring in January
In the winter of 1970-71 eleven manatees sheltered in a spring on the St. Johns River. This past winter the morning roll call passed 850.
news · 17 min
The State of the Orange
Florida citrus went from six million boxes to 244 million and back to thirteen. A long look at how the groves were built, what took them apart, and what it would take to keep the rest.
news · 7 min
Eighteen Million Acres, and the Eight That Are Not Safe
The Florida Wildlife Corridor was drawn to keep the state's wild spine connected from the Everglades to Georgia. Five years in, the map is done and the money is the story.
news · 16 min
The Water Under Everything
Florida sits on one of the most productive aquifers on earth. Here is what it was, what it is now, how it got this way, and what it will take to keep it.
news · 6 min
Apalachicola's Oyster Reefs, Slowly Returning
After a five year closure, the wild oyster is cautiously back on Apalachicola Bay.