Douglas Alderson’s A New Guide to Old Florida Attractions: From Mermaids to Singing Towers Delivers Equal Parts Weird Florida History and Tourist Trap Nostalgia
by Alexander Cendrowski
A man named “Alligator Joe” holds an alligator’s jaw shut with his chin. Snorkelers are encouraged to partake in underwater archery. A reflective, glaring, aluminum-plated castle is erected in the swamplands. Strange how Floridian reality so often sounds like non-Floridian fantasy.
Douglas Alderson’s A New Guide is a love letter in the form of a tourism pamphlet, amplified to book length and filled with 20th century attraction history. Alderson addresses the letter to Florida itself; to a pre-Disney, naturalist approach to “edutainment”; to a trip he took in 1966, packing into an old Rambler station wagon and heading down to the Sunshine State from Illinois. In this framework Alderson situates himself perfectly to examine and detail the peculiar tourist machinations of the country’s oddest state, tracing the lineage of early European tourists (plus or minus a fair shake of Native American abuse) to Ross Allen’s 153 mile “Survival Safari” to Weeki Wachee Springs’ live mermaid shows. His path is often winding, and at times the history is interrupted by patches of self-reflection—or was it the other way around?
The key to A New Guide’s perspective on America’s southernmost appendage is Alderson’s quest to recapture his childhood, to look upon Florida and its attractions with all the wonderment and innocence of youth. He finds it, in part, but he also finds an industry that has expanded on Florida’s natural beauties through a sequence of what he calls “extras”: “Instead of just gazing into the blue portal of a clear spring, how about beautiful mermaids … throw in concrete dinosaurs, African animals, leaping dolphins.” The pictures Alderson includes—century-spanning postcards, brochures, and photographs—only amplify the nostalgic effect, drawing a direct line between the naturalism and wonder of Florida’s tourism past and his hope for a return to form in Florida’s tourism future.
A New Guide to Old Florida Attractions: From Mermaids to Singing Towers is Alderson’s first book in full color, but by no means his first book. Others include Wild Florida Adventures, The Great Florida Seminole Trail, Wild Florida Waters, and Encounters with Florida’s Endangered Wildlife. His articles and photographs, focusing on Floridian wildlife, adventure, and culture, have been featured in Native Peoples, Wildlife Conservation, Florida Naturalist, Mother Earth News, and a number of other magazines. He is the former associate editor of Florida Wildlife magazine, and he edited A Florida Wildlife Anthology: 1947-2003. He lives south of Tallahassee with his wife, Cyndi, and daughter, Cheyenne.
Douglas Alderson’s A New Guide is a love letter in the form of a tourism pamphlet, amplified to book length and filled with 20th century attraction history. Alderson addresses the letter to Florida itself; to a pre-Disney, naturalist approach to “edutainment”; to a trip he took in 1966, packing into an old Rambler station wagon and heading down to the Sunshine State from Illinois. In this framework Alderson situates himself perfectly to examine and detail the peculiar tourist machinations of the country’s oddest state, tracing the lineage of early European tourists (plus or minus a fair shake of Native American abuse) to Ross Allen’s 153 mile “Survival Safari” to Weeki Wachee Springs’ live mermaid shows. His path is often winding, and at times the history is interrupted by patches of self-reflection—or was it the other way around?
The key to A New Guide’s perspective on America’s southernmost appendage is Alderson’s quest to recapture his childhood, to look upon Florida and its attractions with all the wonderment and innocence of youth. He finds it, in part, but he also finds an industry that has expanded on Florida’s natural beauties through a sequence of what he calls “extras”: “Instead of just gazing into the blue portal of a clear spring, how about beautiful mermaids … throw in concrete dinosaurs, African animals, leaping dolphins.” The pictures Alderson includes—century-spanning postcards, brochures, and photographs—only amplify the nostalgic effect, drawing a direct line between the naturalism and wonder of Florida’s tourism past and his hope for a return to form in Florida’s tourism future.
A New Guide to Old Florida Attractions: From Mermaids to Singing Towers is Alderson’s first book in full color, but by no means his first book. Others include Wild Florida Adventures, The Great Florida Seminole Trail, Wild Florida Waters, and Encounters with Florida’s Endangered Wildlife. His articles and photographs, focusing on Floridian wildlife, adventure, and culture, have been featured in Native Peoples, Wildlife Conservation, Florida Naturalist, Mother Earth News, and a number of other magazines. He is the former associate editor of Florida Wildlife magazine, and he edited A Florida Wildlife Anthology: 1947-2003. He lives south of Tallahassee with his wife, Cyndi, and daughter, Cheyenne.
