Tracing Florida Journeys: Explorers, Travelers, and Landscapes Then and Now

In this book, Leslie Poole delves into the stories of explorers and travelers who came to Florida during the past five centuries, looking at their words and the paths they took from the perspective of today.
Discover Florida’s unique places acrosstime through writings from history How hasFlorida’s land changed across five centuries? What has stayed the same, andwhat remains only in memory? In TracingFlorida Journeys, Leslie Pooledelves into the stories of well-known explorers and travelers who came to thepeninsula and wrote about their experiences, looking at their words and thepaths they took from the perspective of today. Inthese 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.” JohnJames Audubon finds riches of bird life in the Keys. Zora Neale Hurston travelsto turpentine camps and sawmills documenting the stories and music of workersand residents. Jonathan Dickinson and Stephen Crane recount shipwrecks along a sparselypopulated coastline. Members of Hernando de Soto’s violent1539 expedition of conquest describe their struggles with dense swamps,forests, and rivers, and resistance from the Native people they exploited. Usingjournals and articles by these and other authors that date back to the early Europeanexploration of the region, Poole retraces their steps. The land they writeabout is often hard to imagine in today’s Florida, a top destination fortourists filled with almost 22 million residents. These stories show theevolving history of the state and the richness of its natural resources.Poole’s comparisons also point to the people who have been displaced and theecosystems that have been dramatically altered by exploration and development. Highlightingthe Florida that was and the Florida that exists now, Poole brings together historicalresearch, interviews with experts, and her personal experiences to tell arevealing story of the state’s natural history. Funding for this publication was provided through a grant from FloridaHumanities with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Anyviews, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publicationdo not necessarily represent those of Florida Humanities or the NationalEndowment for the Humanities.