Tracing Florida Journeys

Discover Florida's unique places across

time through writings from history



How has

Florida's land changed across five centuries? What has stayed the same, and

what remains only in memory? In Tracing

Florida Journeys, Leslie Poole

delves into the stories of well-known explorers and travelers who came to the

peninsula and wrote about their experiences, looking at their words and the

paths they took from the perspective of today.

In

these pages, John Muir and Harriet Beecher Stowe write about their visits to Florida,

reflecting their expectations of a place that was touted to be "paradise." John

James Audubon finds riches of bird life in the Keys. Zora Neale Hurston travels

to turpentine camps and sawmills documenting the stories and music of workers

and residents. Jonathan Dickinson and Stephen Crane recount shipwrecks along a sparsely

populated coastline. Members of Hernando de Soto's violent

1539 expedition of conquest describe their struggles with dense swamps,

forests, and rivers, and resistance from the Native people they exploited.

Using

journals and articles by these and other authors that date back to the early European

exploration of the region, Poole retraces their steps. The land they write

about is often hard to imagine in today's Florida, a top destination for

tourists filled with almost 22 million residents. These stories show the

evolving history of the state and the richness of its natural resources.

Poole's comparisons also point to the people who have been displaced and the

ecosystems that have been dramatically altered by exploration and development.

Highlighting

the Florida that was and the Florida that exists now, Poole brings together historical

research, interviews with experts, and her personal experiences to tell a

revealing story of the state's natural history.



Funding for this publication was provided through a grant from Florida

Humanities with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any

views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication

do not necessarily represent those of Florida Humanities or the National

Endowment for the Humanities.