Florida Tourism Before Disney World

Florida drew tourists long before theme parks: the Department of State dates northern visitors to the 1870s, and the State Archives says late 19th century travelers came to see gardens and glass bottom boats (Department of State; State Archives of Florida).

The first draw was the scenery. The Department of State says visitors from northern states came for the natural beauty and mild climate and that steamboat tours on the state's winding rivers were popular (Department of State). The State Archives roadside attractions exhibit, subtitled Tourism and Spectacle Before Disney, notes that many people credit the tourism boom to the opening of Disney World in the early 1970s, but that the state's popularity did not happen overnight, and that most of the homespun attractions that came before no longer exist (State Archives exhibit).

The exhibit also records who did the work. Because the industry grew during the Jim Crow era, it says, services at roadside attractions, from guided tours and storytellers to porters, drivers and housecleaners, were often provided by African American workers (State Archives exhibit). Last verified: October 18, 2026, after rereading all five parts of the State Archives roadside attractions exhibit, its Tin Can Tourism pages, two Department of State history chapters and the current Silver Springs park notices.

The State Archives says Florida's earliest tourists came to see its rivers, springs and beaches, and Silver Springs near Ocala drew steamboat visitors and later glass bottom boats (State Archives of Florida; Florida State Parks).

State sources date the start differently. Florida State Parks says the springs became a tourist attraction in the 1820s, when visitors poled up the narrow stream, while the State Archives says many ventured to Silver Springs as early as the 1860s by steamboat along the Silver River (Florida State Parks; State Archives). The glass bottom boat is dated 1878 by the State Archives and to the late 1870s by Florida State Parks, which credits Phillip Morrell with fixing a piece of glass in the bottom of a rowboat (State Archives; Florida State Parks).

Springs competed with gimmicks. The State Archives describes submarine boats and underwater viewing areas, and at Weeki Wachee in Hernando County, champion swimmer Newton Perry opened an attraction in 1947 where women performed as mermaids using an underwater tubing system for breathing. Its first theater sat six feet under the surface and held 18 people; the first underwater show was on October 13, 1947. ABC/Paramount bought the attraction in 1959 and built a theater for 500 between 1959 and 1961 (State Archives).

Railroads made long-distance tourism practical: the Department of State says Henry Flagler and Henry Plant built railroads across the state and put up lavish hotels near their lines (Department of State).

The Department of State ties this building spree to the Internal Improvement Act of 1855, which offered cheap or free public land to investors, and says its greatest effect came between the end of the Civil War and World War I (Department of State). Named passenger trains carried the trade south. The State Archives says that in the early decades of the 20th century the Florida Special and the Orange Blossom Special took tourists all the way to Miami and beyond (State Archives).

Steamboats carried tourists to the springs. A State Archives caption for an 1892 photograph of the steamboat Astatula in Marion County describes boats coming through the swamps with a wood fire on top to light the way and bows crowded with tourists bound for Silver Springs (State Archives exhibit).

Highways opened in the 1910s let motorists reach Florida's interior, and the tin can tourists of the 1920s pioneered camper travel, which grew after World War II as trailer parks developed (State Archives of Florida).

The State Archives Tin Can Tourism exhibit says that in 1915 the Dixie Highway Association and state officials began planning a network of paved roads from Miami to the northern border of the United States, that other auto trails such as the Atlantic Highway and Lone Star Trail also ended in Florida, and that the number of automobile tourists rose dramatically every year (State Archives exhibit). The Department of State adds that by the end of World War I more Americans owned automobiles and vacationing in Florida became commonplace (Department of State).

Highways shaped where attractions went. The roadside exhibit says tourists arrived in droves by the late 1920s along US 1, US 27 and US 41, where they saw the signs for each attraction (State Archives exhibit). After World War II, the Department of State says, wartime highway and airport construction left a modern transportation network for the visitors who seemed to arrive in an endless stream (Department of State). The tin can exhibit notes that camper travel grew among postwar families and retirees heading south, and that trailer parks developed to cater to them (State Archives exhibit).

Many did; the State Archives exhibit dates them from the Alligator Farm's founding in 1893 to Six Gun Territory in 1963 (State Archives of Florida; State Archives).

The State Archives calls Cypress Gardens, founded by Dick and Julie Pope, the state's first theme park and the birthplace of performance water skiing in 1941, and says President Calvin Coolidge attended the 1929 Bok Tower dedication. The same page gives the dedication date two ways, February 1, 1929 in photo captions and February 29, 1929 in its text (State Archives). Monkey Jungle was among the first attractions to let animals roam the grounds, and Marine Studios opened south of St. Augustine with tanks and a porpoise stadium (State Archives).

Tastes shifted toward new entertainment by the 1960s; many older attractions built roller coasters and new shows, and others closed when developers bought the land for neighborhoods and expressways (State Archives of Florida).

New entertainment parks opened in that decade. The State Archives says Six Gun Territory, a 200-acre western-themed park on State Highway 40 in Ocala, opened on February 2, 1963 with saloons, gunfights and a narrow-gauge train, and closed in 1984 after the opening of Disney World and other setbacks. Pirate's World in Dania opened in 1967 with roller coasters and arcades, closed in 1975, and became a townhouse development (State Archives).

Garden attractions faded too. The State Archives says McKee Jungle Gardens, one of the state's biggest tourist spots in the 1930s, declined by the 1960s and closed in 1976, with most of the land sold to a developer and a small part saved by a local organization (State Archives). The Department of State's later chapter notes that tourism stayed important, now led by large theme parks in the Orlando area (Department of State).

Silver Springs and Weeki Wachee are now state parks, and the State Archives exhibit describes several private attractions as still running when it was written (Florida State Parks; State Archives; State Archives).

Silver Springs State Park, at 5656 E. Silver Springs Blvd in Silver Springs (352-236-7149), is open 8 a.m. to sunset every day and charges $8 per vehicle; glass bottom boat tours still run on the Silver River. One current notice: the park's Sea Hunt Deck has been closed since Oct. 23, 2025, though the new trail system is open (Florida State Parks). The Florida Park Service took over the headsprings on Oct. 1, 2013, renaming Silver River State Park as Silver Springs State Park and adding 231 acres (Florida State Parks).

Weeki Wachee became a Florida state park in 2008, according to the State Archives (State Archives). The State Archives also says Bok Tower's carillon still plays for tourists, though the page counts the bells two ways, a 57-bell carillon in its text and 60 bronze bells in a photo caption, that the water ski shows remained a major draw at Cypress Gardens when the exhibit was written, and that the St. Augustine Alligator Farm sits on Highway A1A near the Bridge of Lions (State Archives; State Archives).