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Paradise Park was the ""colored only"" counterpart to Silver
Springs, a central Florida tourist attraction famous for its
crystal-clear water and glass bottom boats. From 1949 to 1969,
boats passed each other on the Silver River - blacks on one side,
whites on the other. Though the patrons of both parks shared the
same river, they never crossed the invisible line in the water.
Full of vivid photographs, vintage advertisements, and interviews
with employees and patrons, Remembering Paradise Park portrays a
place of delight and leisure during the painful era of Jim Crow.
Racial violence was at its height in Florida - the famous Groveland
rape case happened right as Paradise Park opened - and many African
Americans saw the park as a safe place for families. It was a
popular vacation spot for the area's strong black community, which
outnumbered the white community as early as the Civil War and had
become one of the most cohesive and prosperous black populations in
the South. This book compares the park to other tourist
destinations set aside for African Americans in the state and
across the country. Though Silver Springs was Florida's only
attraction to operate a parallel facility for African Americans,
Paradise Park has been just a whisper in the story of Florida
tourism until now.
In the postwar explosion of domestic tourism, Weeki Wachee spring
offered the quintessential vacation fantasy, a city of colourful
mermaids in a natural crystal spring right off the West Coast
highway in a sparsely inhabited Florida. In those early days, the
mermaids had to stand alongside the highway to flag travellers
down, but once word of their charms got out, travellers headed
south to playgrounds in Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, and Tampa found
Weeki Wachee a tantalising detour from the gruelling two-lane road
connecting vacationland with the work-a-day world to the north.
Vickers shows how that local novelty became a stellar international
attraction. Founded in 1947 by Walton Hall Smith and Newt Perry,
Weeki Wachee and its featured attraction, mermaids, combined the
allure of pinup girls with the wholesome talents of variety
entertainers to create a daily schedule of underwater acts ranging
from eating bananas and performing ballet to staging underwater
musicals. For nearly 60 years, these mermaids with their underwater
talents have attracted crowds of vacationers, film crews, and
celebrities. Drawing on extensive archival research as well as
interviews with dozens of mermaids and other park employees,
Vickers traces the park's rise to prominence. Brilliantly
illustrated with 250 stunning photos, the resulting work shows what
it was like to be a mermaid at Weeki Wachee in its heyday. Weeki
Wachee Mermaids also explores the enduring appeal of the
attraction. Once people get past Weeki Wachee's once crumbling,
recently restored exterior, they continue to be just as genuinely
awed by the mermaids as Elvis was.
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