Historical Traveler's Guide to Florida

From Fort Pickens in the Panhandle to Fort Jefferson in the ocean 40 miles beyond Key West, historical travelers will find many adventures waiting for them in Florida. Eliot Kleinberg—whose vocation, avocation, and obsession is Florida History—has poked around the state looking for the most fascinating historic places to visit. In this new updated edition he presents 74 of his favorites—17 of them are new to this edition, and the rest have been completely updated. Along the Gulf Coast see Henry Plant’s minaret-spired Moorish jewel of a hotel in Tampa; John Ringling’s home and art museum, as well as the affiliated circus museum, in Sarasota; and the humble homes of Cuban and Italian cigar workers, as well as the newly restored clock tower and the venerable Columbia restaurant, in legendary Ybor City. Up in north Florida visit Civil War battlefields; stroll the University of Florida campus amid ivy-covered brick buildings; and see buffalo, wild Spanish horses, and other wildlife on Paynes Prairie. In central Florida you can explore Eatonville, home of writer Zora Neale Hurston and setting for part of her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God; view the Batista Collection at the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Daytona Beach; and listen to carillon music as you stroll the gardens around Bok Tower. Down in the Keys you’ll find the heart-wrenching monument to the Labor Day Storm in Islamorada; the 250-year-old wreck of the San Pedro, “a living museum in the sea”; and the Key West home of famous author Ernest Hemingway, where he wrote To Have and Have Not and For Whom the Bell Tolls.