Florida Frontiers

Over the past few decades, the mid-twentieth century paintings by a group known as the Highwaymen have become some of the most popular artwork produced in Florida.

The new exhibit “Paintings of Nostalgic Florida: The Original Highwaymen Artists” is on display at the Brevard Museum of History and Natural Science April 6—28.

The opening reception on Friday April 6 at 6:00pm features wine, heavy hors d’oeuvres, and the opportunity to meet living Highwaymen artists. A presentation will be given by Gary Monroe, author of the book “The Highwaymen: Florida’s African American Landscape Artists.” Tickets are $25 per person ($20 for FHS Members) and are available at myfloridahistory.org.

The Highwaymen artists are a group of largely self-taught African American painters known for their colorful Florida landscapes. The first Highwaymen artist, Alfred Hair, was inspired by white landscape artist A.E. “Bean” Backus, who had a meticulous, detail oriented painting style. Hair also painted scenes of the natural Florida, but developed a rapid style of painting that allowed him to create beautiful works very quickly.

Hair shared his painting techniques with Harold Newton, who in turn, taught other African American artists.

Backus was able to sell his paintings in galleries, but in the racially segregated Florida of the 1950s and ‘60s, the Highwaymen had to develop creative marketing strategies.

“I was the salesman for the whole group,” says Al Black. “I would load all the paintings up in the car and take off in the mornings, and if they give me 50 paintings I would sell 50 paintings.”

Starting from Fort Pierce, Black would drive south to Key West and north to Alabama, making many stops in between. He would sell the Highwaymen art to banks, offices, and along the side of the road.

The Highwaymen artists produced many works of art for Black to sell, because the more they produced, the more they earned. Sometimes the paintings would still be wet when he loaded them into his car. Repairing damaged work was how Black eventually became a Highwaymen artist himself.

“I would be out on the road and I learned to paint by fixing all of the different artist’s paintings when I messed one up,” says Black.

The Highwaymen artists are known for their idyllic depictions of the natural Florida prior to development and urban sprawl. Their paintings capture marshlands, river scenes, beaches, sunrises and sunsets, Spanish moss hanging from cypress trees, brightly colored Poinciana trees, and Florida’s indigenous wildlife.

Black says that the Highwaymen paintings preserve Florida history. “The way Florida used to look, it don’t look that way anymore. We all captured it on canvas.”

Mary Ann Carroll has the distinction of being the only female Highwaymen artist. “I never really thought about it as me being a woman and they being men,” Carroll says. “I just thought of us as artists making a living for ourselves.”

The Highwaymen artists never thought of themselves as an organized group, Carroll says. While each of the Highwaymen had the same goals and desires, they worked independently. “It’s like a bunch of people in an orange grove picking fruit,” says Carroll. “But everybody’s picking his own fruit. We were associated by our gift.”

The name “Highwaymen” was given to the painters by art dealer Jim Fitch in 1995, in an article he wrote for the magazine “Antiques and Art around Florida.” After Fitch coined the Highwaymen name, books about the artists soon followed. In 2001, Gary Monroe wrote “The Highwaymen: Florida’s African American Landscape Painters.”

In 2004, a group of 26 Highwaymen artists were inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame.

Original Highwaymen artist Roy McLendon was surprised to see so many artists being recognized. “A lot of the people I didn’t even know,” McLendon says. He believes that the popularity of Highwaymen paintings led to imitation. “Pictures that would sell for $35 was selling for $3,500 and $4,500 for the same painting. Now everyone wanted to be a Highwaymen.”

The exhibition “Paintings of Nostalgic Florida: The Original Highwaymen Artists” will feature work by Isaac Knight, Robert L. Lewis, and Roy McLendon. Each Saturday in April, one of the artists will be giving a demonstration, included with regular museum admission.

Nearly a year ago, hurricane Irma swept through Brevard County.

The day after the storm, September 11, 2017, Rockledge photographer and archaeology enthusiast Randy Lathrop, also known as Randy Shots, discovered that the hurricane had dislodged an historic canoe and washed it ashore from the Indian River in Cocoa.

The 15 foot, 700 pound canoe captured the public’s imagination.

The story made the front page of the Wall Street Journal, was published in Smithsonian magazine, and went viral on social media. The fact that the canoe was challenging for archaeologists to date and analyze just added to its mystique.

A year later, after extensive testing, archaeologists are still not exactly sure how old the canoe is.

“I was lucky enough to get a sample of that canoe and I was really excited because I grew up in Florida,” says Carla Hadden from the University of Georgia Center for Applied Isotope Studies. Hadden conducted carbon dating tests on the canoe sample, trying to determine its age.

“When we got the results, I knew it was going to be a kind of interesting to explain because rather than being able to say, ‘oh this dates to exactly this year A.D.,’ we ended up with three discreet possible ranges, so it kind of added to the mystery of how old this canoe was rather than giving a definitive answer.”

Since 1949, radiocarbon dating has been a primary tool for archaeologists to determine the age of objects. In the case of the Irma Canoe, the results were less than conclusive. Analysis shows that there is a 50% chance that the canoe was made between 1640 and 1680. There’s a 32% chance it’s from between 1760 and 1818, and an 8.6% chance it was created after 1930.

Along with carbon dating, dendrochronology helps archaeologists determine when artifacts like dugout canoes were created.

The ancient Greeks observed that rings form inside of tree trunks, and in the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci noticed that those tree rings form annually. By the early twentieth century, dendrochronology evolved as a science.

Cross-dating is the first principle of dendrochronology.

“There’s going to be the pattern of variability on ring width,” says Laura Smith from the University of Tennessee, Laboratory of Tree Ring Science.

“So if we have an item, an archaeological piece, say a canoe, that is undated, we call that a floating chronology. We can measure up the rings and we can know that pattern, but we don’t know where it is in the context of time. To help understand that, we use what’s called a master chronology. These have been developed all over the world. There’s what’s called the international tree ring databank.”

The master chronologies associate each annual tree ring with a calendar year. Scientists use statistical methods to match the floating chronology from a specimen like the Irma Canoe with the master chronology in a particular region.

Unfortunately, dendrochronology couldn’t help archaeologists figure out if the Irma Canoe was created in the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, or 1900s.

“One of the issues with the Irma Canoe is that it’s Red Cedar which is quite unusual,” Smith says. “I guess this is the only canoe in the state of Florida that they recorded of this species. And there aren’t Red Cedar chronologies in Florida. So, that’s kind of an issue we’ve come up against.”

Hundreds of canoes have been discovered in Florida, some created as long as 7,000 years ago. Even if we don’t know exactly how old the Irma Canoe is, it is still an intriguing discovery.

“It’s exciting when the public gets excited about canoe research, and it’s really fun, because we don’t have to sell it,” says Julie Duggins, who recovered the Irma Canoe for the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research. “It’s just by nature pretty thrilling to Floridians to learn about something like boats, boat making, this tradition that goes back thousands of years. We’ve got the highest concentration of dugout canoes in the world here.”

If you happen to stumble upon what appears to be an ancient canoe, or any archaeological artifact, Duggins encourages you to call the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research, like Randy Lathrop did when he found the Irma Canoe.

Dr. Ben Brotemarkle is executive director of the Florida Historical Society. He’s also host of “Florida Frontiers: The Weekly Radio Magazine of the Florida Historical Society” and the public television series “Florida Frontiers.” More information is at www.myfloridahistory.org.

There are two temporary exhibits focusing on local history and culture currently on display at the Brevard Museum of History and Natural Science, 2201 Michigan Avenue, Cocoa.

“Cocoa: A Hometown History” is on display through May 5, and “A Time to Shine: Mismatched Items from the Permanent Collection” can be seen through March 31.

“We really want to explore the unique sides and aspects of the different towns within Brevard County, and it made sense to start with Cocoa, home of the Brevard Museum,” says museum manager Madeline Calise. “It led us to looking at the buildings that have stood since the beginning of settlement in the area, the people who made a big impact on the community, the large events, the different industries, the reasons people came to this area and how they made their livelihoods.”

The Cocoa exhibit includes historic photographs of building still standing, such as Travis Hardware Store, the oldest existing business in the city. The current building was constructed in 1907, but the business has been operating since the 1880s, making much of the growth of the area possible. Travis Hardware has supplied construction materials for early settlement, the land boom of the 1920s, and the growth associated with the Space Age.

The exhibit “Cocoa: A Hometown History” also focuses on other local businesses and institutions.

“There are some really neat speakers from the Vanguard Drive-In Theater,” says Calise. “There’s also a beautiful blanket donated from the Community Women’s Club that shows different buildings from Cocoa Village that you can still see, including the Cocoa Village Playhouse or the Aladdin Theater, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, and the Community Women’s Center.”

Also on display is a “mosquito beater” made from palm fronds. A video showing as part of the Cocoa exhibit includes interviews with members of the Mosquito Beaters group, which holds their annual gathering every March. The group, founded by George “Speedy” Harrell, was originally organized for people who had lived in central Brevard County prior to 1950.

Most museums do not have enough display area to show all of the items in their permanent collections, and the Brevard Museum of History and Natural Science is no exception.

The temporary exhibit “A Time to Shine: Mismatched Items from the Permanent Collection” includes everything from a fancy silver serving set, to a box for tourists to take home a live baby alligator, to Seminole Indian dolls.

“It’s in our larger exhibit hall, so you’ll get to see a large amount of items that are usually in storage and only get to be seen by staff and volunteers,” says Calise. “Going through our regular inventory we keep finding items that we think are really unique or interesting, or detailed, or particularly well made. We’d like to show them off, but we really haven’t had a specific exhibit to do that. This is going to be our favorite fun items in different collections that we’ve found within our permanent collection.”

The new temporary exhibit includes unique eyeglasses, handbags, and historic pharmaceutical bottles. There is also pre-automobile transportation on display.

“It’s a two seater buggy that would normally be drawn by one horse. We found it upstairs and thought that we had to include it,” says Calise.

The two temporary exhibits highlighting local history and culture join a wide variety of exhibits on permanent display at the Brevard Museum of History and Natural Science.

“The Ice Age exhibit covers the Megafauna and the Paleo-Hunters of that era from Florida, and specifically Brevard County,” says Calise. “We have a Cape Canaveral Lighthouse exhibit, and artifacts from the Taylor family. There’s a Florida history section that covers everything from Spanish exploration to the different industries within the area, including cattle, citrus, turpentine, and trains. There’s also the Hubble Space Telescope exhibit.”

The centerpiece of the museum is “The People of Windover” exhibit, looking at the discovery in Titusville of a pond cemetery between 7,000 and 8,000 years old. Hands-on activities augment displays of actual artifacts used by Archaic Age people in what would become Brevard County.

“We also have a butterfly garden, and 22 acres of Florida nature trails,” says Calise.

The museum is open Thursday through Saturday, 10am to 5pm.

Kevin McCarthy has written several popular books focusing on African American history and culture in Florida.

From 1969 to 2005, McCarthy taught at the University of Florida. He has written or edited 35 books, 30 of them about Florida. His books include “The Book Lover’s Guide to Florida,” “Florida Lighthouses,” “Thirty Florida Shipwrecks,” and “Twenty Florida Pirates.”

Despite his diverse interests, the author keeps returning to the topic of black history in the Sunshine State.

“I bought a pup tent in 1976, camped my way around the state of Florida, just to learn as much as I could about this remarkable state I was going to call my home for the rest of my life,” says McCarthy. “I began to go to African American churches, I went to hundreds of cemeteries, sites around, went to the archives in Tallahassee, just for my own information about what the African American history was like in this state. I was surprised to find that we have a lot of personages in our history of African American decent that really ought to be better known.”

McCarthy’s book “African Americans in Florida,” co-authored with Maxine Jones, profiles dozens of interesting people including educator Mary McLeod Bethune, poet James Weldon Johnson, and civil rights activist Harry T. Moore.

“I think in the top five would be Zora Neale Hurston,” says McCarthy, citing her activities as a folklorist and anthropologist, in addition to her better known work as a novelist. “She used to go out to turpentine camps and to logger camps, interview people, and she began to accumulate lots of information about the folklife among African Americans.”

African American history in Florida goes all the way back to the first Spanish contact. People of African descent were on board all of the Spanish ships that came here, making black people among the first non-indigenous people to set foot in Florida.

“One of the first expeditions that came to Florida had an African named Estevanico,” says McCarthy. An expedition of 300 men under Pánfilo de Nárvaez was reduced to 80 as they unsuccessfully attempted to establish a settlement in Florida. Estevanico was one of only four who survived a voyage on makeshift rafts in an attempt to get to Mexico. “He was not only a strong person to survive the terrible ordeals they had, but he made a significant contribution to helping the Spanish discover what it was like in the southeast.”

Educators have found it useful that the book “African Americans in Florida” has a companion Teachers Manual.

“I met with school officials to make this book as applicable as possible to middle and high school students, and help teachers use it,” says McCarthy. “My daughter is a fourth grade teacher in Orlando, and she doesn’t have a whole lot of time to prepare brand new material every single day.”

Another one of Kevin McCarthy’s most popular books is “African American Sites in Florida.”

Fort Mose, established in 1738, is known as the first legally sanctioned black community in what is now the United States. Eatonville, established in 1887, is the oldest incorporated African American municipality entirely governed by African Americans. McCarthy identifies many other important historical sites.

“Fort Jefferson, down in the Florida Keys, the largest masonry structure ever built in this country, was built by slave labor,” says McCarthy.

“In Daytona Beach, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in professional baseball. If you visit Daytona Beach today, you will see a statue of Jackie Robinson outside of Jackie Robinson ballpark, where spring training games are still played. Robinson is holding the hands of two youngsters, one black, one white, clearly speaking to them. Behind the statue there is a wavy wall made of stone.” McCarthy says the shape of the wall symbolizes the ripple effects that one person can have on history.

In his book “Black Florida,” McCarthy continues his study of African American history and culture looking at the Rosewood Massacre, and civil rights demonstrations in Tampa and Tallahassee. He takes readers to Pensacola, the home of Daniel “Chappie” James, America’s first black four star general, promoted in 1975.

“Almost every major city in Florida has some significance in African American history,” says McCarthy.

Touring an historic cemetery can be like visiting a museum.

As you walk among the headstones, markers, and memorials, you can gain insight into the lives of individual pioneers, people who gave their lives in service to their country, and the lives of children cut tragically short.

Guided, themed cemetery tours will be part of the seventh annual Pioneer Day to be held Saturday, February 10^th from 10 am to 4 pm at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and the historic Sams House, both on North Tropical Trail, Merritt Island.

The Sams, LaRoche, Porcher, and other families came from the Charleston, South Carolina area after the Civil War to settle on north Merritt Island. Two historic Sams family homes are preserved in the Pine Island Conservation Area.

The congregation of St. Luke’s started meeting in 1879, and by 1888 built a Wooden Gothic style church that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.

Tom McFarland is a member of both St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and the Pine Island Preservation Society, and an organizer of Saturday’s Pioneer Day event on north Merritt Island.

“The early church services were held in John Sams’ house in north Merritt Island, and he was one of the founders of the church,” says McFarland. “He hosted Bishop Young on his first visit to Brevard County, and Bishop Young was the one who approved having a church built on north Merritt Island for the Episcopalians in the area. Most of the pioneers were from South Carolina and they were mostly Episcopalians, and were eager to have an established church here.”

One of Saturday’s themed tours of the historic cemetery at St. Luke’s is from “An Archaeologist’s Perspective.” Consulting early church records and doing new research, Molly Thomas documented the cemetery.

“The first step is researching the history of the property,” says Thomas. “Important details I look for include ownership, expansions, and other changes to the property line. The second step is measuring the parameter of the property and taking pictures. This may seem mundane, but property lines can change, neighbors can build without permits, etc. and often, such changes go unnoticed at sites that receive few visitors. Encroachment can become an issue when there are human remains at stake, and ensuring that the records match reality can avoid such issues.”

The third step Thomas follows is to do what she calls a “head count.” This includes identifying both marked and unmarked burials. Since St. Luke’s had excellent records, she was able to cross reference their plot map and burial ledger with what was actually observable in their cemetery.

“Compared to most cemeteries I have worked on, St. Luke’s had great records and takes impeccable care of their property,” says Thomas. “But after a century, there are bound to be some errors.”

One man’s grave was indicated on the cemetery map as having “no stone.”

“I discovered his stone underneath about three inches of pine needles,” says Thomas. “It had been there the whole time. I was the first one to see it in over a decade, and it felt good to give him his identity back.”

Thomas submitted a detailed report to the state’s Master Site File, including an updated map of the property.

Other themed cemetery tours during the Pioneer Day event will feature costumed guides portraying people who are buried there. They include journalist and controversial archaeologist Vernon Lamb, pioneer and pilot Laurence Porcher Allen, early photographer Julia Porcher, and innovative citrus grower E.B. Porcher. Members of the Sams family will portray their ancestors who are buried in the cemetery.

Tuskegee Airman, Colonel Edwin Cowen, is also buried at St. Luke’s.

“He has no marker, and that’s something we want to change,” says McFarland. “We really want to honor his presence in our cemetery and his historic contribution to civil rights and to the United States Air Force.”

Other Pioneer Day activities include live music, living history demonstrations, educational exhibits, a crafts fair, and children’s games. There will be farmer’s market vendors, food trucks, homemade soup, and a fish fry dinner. Talks throughout the day include presentations on Florida’s ancient canoes, Cape Canaveral history, and the legacy of African American Dennis Sawyer.

Senator Bob Graham and attorney Chris Hand, co-authors of the book “America, The Owner’s Manual: You Can Fight City Hall and Win,” participated in a panel discussion recently at the Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities in Eatonville.

The topic was “Citizen Activism Works.” The panelists talked about effective ways that anyone with passion for a particular issue can make the government work for them.

Senator Bob Graham is one of Florida’s most respected and popular politicians. He served four years in the Florida legislature before becoming governor in 1978. He left office with an 83% approval rating, and beginning in 1986, served three consecutive terms in the United States Senate. He created the Bob Graham Center for Public Service at the University of Florida.

“Voting may be the single most important thing you do, because that selects the people who will use their constitutional responsibilities to advance the interests of the nation, but it’s not the end of your citizenship responsibilities,” says Graham. “We all have the ability to shape our community and our state and our nation by our own action.”

Attorney Chris Hand has served as speech writer and press secretary for Senator Graham, and was Chief of Staff for the City of Jacksonville under Alvin Brown, that city’s first African American mayor.

The advice that Senator Graham and Chris Hand provide in their book is non-partisan. They offer step-by step instructions for engaging with the government effectively.

“For those who are pleased with the election results, the question has been ‘what do we do now to hold elected officials accountable to the change they’ve promised to bring?’” says Hand. “For those who were disappointed by the election results its ‘did I do enough? Are there other ways that I can get involved?’ This book is hopefully one of the answers to that question.”

In their book, Graham and Hand present the stories of 35 people and groups who have challenged the government successfully on a variety of issues. Several of their examples are from Florida.

“It wasn’t that long ago that there was a strong proposal to demolish what is now South Beach,” says Graham. “The economic and political leaders of the city felt that Disney had built a wall across Florida, and that tourists wouldn’t come south to their traditional places such as Miami Beach, unless they had similar tourist attractions to Disney. The idea was to take down much of the old Art Deco architecture and build a theme park.”

Barbara Capitman led an effort to save and restore the iconic Art Deco buildings of South Beach.

“Her persistence and her skill in manipulating a very complex bureaucratic process to get South Beach designated as a National Historic District were the keys to saving South Beach and really saving Miami Beach as an international destination,” says Graham.

Another example of effective, active citizenship discussed by Graham and Hand involves people from the Florida Keys fighting a dramatic increase in insurance rates.

The series of hurricanes in 2004 and 2005 had a significant impact on much of the state, but not the Florida Keys. Residents were shocked when they saw a dramatic rise in their property insurance rates, even though they had not been affected by the storms.

“So they used one of the most important skills of effective citizenship,” says Hand. “They did their homework. They consulted with experts, they did research, and they learned that these rate increases really weren’t based on anything justifiable. Having done this excellent homework and turned themselves into credible citizen advocates, they took their case to Tallahassee and were successful in having these insurance increases rolled back.”

Graham and Hand say that if you know your facts and become a credible citizen advocate, you have a much greater chance of success in making the government respond to your concerns.

Besides having passion for an issue, and preparation of a credible argument, the authors say that persistence is the key to effective citizenship.

“Citizenship isn’t intuitive,” says Graham. “You’re not born with an automatic awareness of what it takes to be an effective citizen. It’s a skill like playing a sport or a musical instrument.”

The 29^th annual Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities is underway and continues through January 28.

The event is presented by the Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community, and includes a series of presentations in a “Communities Conference” at Rollins College and in Eatonville.

Presenters at this year’s event include poet Sonia Sanchez; producer, recording artist, and actor David Banner; host of the NPR program 1A, Joshua Johnson; and Senator Bob Graham. The popular HATitude luncheon features fashion and food, and the exhibit “An Eatonville Remembrance” is at the Hurston Museum.

The three day Outdoor Festival portion of the event on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday features vendors selling original arts and crafts, food vendors with fried fish and other festival food, and musical performances throughout each day including headliners The Zapp Band, and The Motown Tribute Review.

Eatonville is the oldest incorporated African American municipality in the United States. Growing up in the all black town had a profound effect on Zora Neale Hurston’s attitudes about race that can be seen in her work.

“We say that Zora Neale Hurston and the Eatonville community are two sides of the same hand,” says N.Y. Nathiri, executive director of the Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community. “For Zora Neale Hurston, Eatonville represents the quintessential cultural impact that people of African ancestry, particularly rural southern people in this country, contribute to the culture of the United States.”

In the 1930s and ‘40s, writer, folklorist, and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston was a celebrated figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston is best remembered for her 1937 novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” the story of Eatonville resident Janie Crawford and her attempts at self-realization.

“’Their Eyes Were Watching God’ is history, it’s fiction, it’s pathos, it’s tragedy, all rolled up together in one incredible literary gem,” says Florence Turcotte, literary manuscripts archivist at the University of Florida’s P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History. “Making history come alive is sort of what I like to do, and that’s what excites me about Zora, is that she fictionalized real life and said a lot about the human condition, and a lot about life in Florida during her stay here.”

Hurston’s other novels include “Jonah’s Gourd Vine,” the story of an unfaithful man with an understanding wife; “Moses: Man of the Mountain,” a retelling of the biblical story of Moses; and “Seraph on the Suwanee,” Hurston’s only book that features white people as main characters. Hurston also wrote dozens of short stories, essays, and dramatic works.

Hurston’s literary career began even before she graduated from Barnard College in 1927. In 1925, her short essay “Spunk” was included in a respected anthology called “The New Negro.” While attending college in New York, Hurston worked with Harlem Renaissance contemporaries including Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman on the literary magazine “Fire!”

After earning her Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology, Hurston continued her graduate studies at Columbia University. As an anthropologist who studied under the renowned Franz Boas, Hurston published two collections of folklore. “Tell My Horse” looks at life in Haiti and Jamaica, including the practice of Voodoo. She wrote the book “Mules and Men” while living in Brevard County, in Eau Gallie.

“The book ‘Mules and Men’ was published in 1935, and was essentially a non-fiction account of Hurston’s adventures and experiences as a folklorist and anthropologist, in the late 1920s and early 1930s,” says Virginia Lynn Moylan, author of the book “Zora Neale Hurston’s Final Decade.” “The first section is devoted to her experiences in Eatonville collecting folklore, and includes 70 of her glorious folktales, including ‘Why Women Always Take Advantage of Men.’ The second section covers the period that she did research in New Orleans, into Hoodoo religion and practices. Today, it is still considered the preeminent collection of African American folklore.”

By the time Hurston died in 1960, she was broke, forgotten, and her books were out of print. Today, she is recognized as an important writer whose work is taught in classrooms around the world.

“Work that is truly of merit, lives,” says N.Y. Nathiri. “Today, Zora Neale Hurston’s work, her literature, her genius, is acknowledged and celebrated throughout the literary world.”

Since 1906, people have gathered at Spring Bayou in Tarpon Springs each January 6th to watch young men compete to find a submerged wooden cross. Today, thousands attend the ceremony. The unique Epiphany celebration is one example of the Greek culture that is still prevalent in Tarpon Springs.

In the city of Tarpon Springs you can listen to Greek music played on a bouzouki, try the pastry baklava, have a meal of lamb stew or a Greek seafood dish, sip the licorice flavored alcoholic beverage ouzo, and enjoy many other aspects of traditional Greek culture.

You can see the Neo-Byzantine style architecture of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, and watch the sponge divers unload their catch on the city dock downtown.

Tarpon Springs has the largest percentage of Greek Americans of any city in the United States.

“Even today, after people have been here four or five generations, there is still a big segment of the population that speaks Greek,” says Tina Bucuvalas, curator of arts and history for the City of Tarpon Springs.

When the first Greeks came to Tarpon Springs in 1905, a thriving town was already in place.

When Hamilton Disston bought 4 million acres of land for 25 cents per acre in 1881, it included the land that would become Tarpon Springs. To stimulate development, Disston brought businessman Anton Safford to Tarpon Springs.

The Victorian home that Safford lived in can be visited today. The Safford House Museum features period furniture and original family artifacts that present the home as it was in 1883.

The Orange Belt Railway came to town in 1887. The train depot is now a museum.

“The building we’re in was built in 1909 because the original railroad station burned down in 1908. This was restored in 2005,” says Sharon Sawyer of the Tarpon Springs Area Historical Society.

“The railroad was brought here by Peter Demens. He brought the railroad from Sanford to Tarpon Springs and then on down to St. Petersburg. Before the railroad came, everybody had to get here by boat or wagon, so the railroad in 1887 made a big difference here in town.”

It was the sponge industry that really put Tarpon Springs on the map.

By the mid-1800s, there was a thriving sponge industry in the Florida Keys, but by the early 1900s, Tarpon Springs was the largest sponge port in the United States.

While sponges in the Keys were harvested with long poles, in Tarpon Springs, Greek sponge divers donned canvas suits with round metal helmets.

“John Cocoris realized that the way that sponges were harvested in Greece would produce far more than the hooking methods they were using in Florida,” says Tina Bucuvalas.

“They brought over Greeks. At first 500 came in 1905, and then within a couple of years there were 1,500, and there were a lot of boats. It very quickly made Tarpon Springs the Sponge Capital of the World. Tarpon Springs was a big, important town at a time when St. Petersburg was a wide spot in the road.”

With the large influx of Greek sponge divers and their families to Tarpon Springs, businesses and institutions to serve them were established, including restaurants, grocery stores, bakeries, and coffee houses.

Today, Tarpon Springs retains a distinctive European flavor.

“They get up in the morning and have Greek food, and sweep out their courtyards which have various plants you might see in Greece,” says Bucuvalas. “They’ll have their coffee outside. The old ladies in their head scarves will be going over to St. Michael’s Chapel or St. Nicholas, or down to the bakery.”

St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church was constructed in 1907 and expanded in 1943 with marble imported from Greece.

The unique Epiphany celebration held each January 6th attracts people from around the world. Following a ceremony at the church, the congregation walks to the dock at Spring Bayou, where a wooden cross is thrown into the water. The young man who retrieves the cross is believed to bring special blessings to his family for the year.

The Patriarch of Constantinople, the Greek Orthodox equivalent of Catholicism’s Pope, came to Tarpon Springs in 2006 for the 100^th anniversary of the town’s Epiphany ceremony.

Florida used to be located at the South Pole.

As part of the continent Gondwana 650 million years ago, the foundation of Florida was tucked between the land masses that would become South America and Africa. The rest of eastern North America was then part of another continent called Laurentia. As the Earth’s tectonic plates shifted, the basement rocks of our modern continents moved across the globe.

About 300 million years ago, Gondwana and Laurentia collided, forming the Appalachian Mountains in what would become North America and the Mauritanide Mountains in what would eventually be Africa. The Florida portion of Gondwana joined with Laurentia at a line that runs southwest to northeast through modern south Alabama, south Georgia, southern South Carolina, and eastern North Carolina.

By about 200 million years ago, Gondwana and Laurentia had sutured together to form the supercontinent Pangea. At this point Florida’s basement rock was located north of the equator, much closer to its current position, but was surrounded by land. Florida was near the middle of the Pangea supercontinent, far from any ocean, probably surrounded by desert. Pangea did not last long from a geological perspective, breaking up after just 85 million years.

The breakup of Pangea resulted in the creation of Florida as a peninsula.

“North America separated from Africa, South America separated from Africa, Europe and Asia did their own thing, India broke away and slammed into the south side of Asia, creating the Himalaya mountains,” says Albert C. Hine, professor of Marine Science at the University of South Florida and author of the book “Geologic History of Florida: Major Events That Formed the Sunshine State.”

“So it was a period of time where there was a significant reorganization of the continental masses on earth, and during that time the basement rocks that created the Florida peninsula were isolated and left alone, and then on top of the basement rocks, the limestones have accumulated that we see, and the rocks and sediments that we see that form our beaches have occurred over the past 200 million years,” Hine says.

For tens of millions of years, most of Florida was separated from the rest of North America by the Georgia Channel Seaway. Eventually, the water receded and Florida became a visible extension of North America, but with a distinctly different foundation than the rest of the continent. The Suwannee Basin and the Florida-Bahama Blocks that make up the foundation of the Florida peninsula have much more in common with the rocks of northwest Africa than with the bedrock of the rest of North America.

At different points in geologic history, Florida has been totally submerged, but it has also been twice as wide as it is now.

“During glacial events, the huge ice sheet, it’s called the Laurentide Ice Sheet, covered most of North America, and the Fenno-Scandanavian Ice Sheet covered most of Europe,” says Hine. “Water was extracted from the ocean and snowed on land. Over thousands of years, that snow built up into thick ice sheets. So water was withdrawn from the ocean as much as 400 feet. So sea level dropped about 400 feet, 130 meters. As a result, Florida being topographically low and flat, that exposed a huge portion of the Florida platform to the air, and became dry.”

Prehistoric animals and probably Pre-Columbian people lived on dry land that is now submerged under 200 feet of water in the Gulf of Mexico.

Hine says that rising sea levels are an inevitable part of Florida’s future.

“It’s a function of global warming and global climate change,” says Hine. “Scientists realize, of course, it’s been politicized, to our chagrin, but the data are real, and the predictive models are the best we can possibly make them, and they’re getting better with time. That’s been demonstrated. All that clearly shows that sea level is going to rise in Florida in time periods that are important to humans. Not thousands of years or millions of years, but in decades. As a result, we have to start to plan how we’re going to deal with that. As we’re planning, we continue to try to make the science better, and to make the predictions better.”

On Christmas night 1951, a bomb exploded under the Mims home of educator and civil rights activist Harry T. Moore. The blast was so loud it could be heard several miles away in Titusville.

Moore died while being transported to Sanford, the closest place where a black man could be hospitalized. His wife Harriette died nine days later from injuries sustained in the blast.

The couple celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary on the day of the explosion, and Harriette lived just long enough to see her husband buried.

The Moore’s daughter, Juanita Evangeline Moore, was working in Washington, D.C. in 1951, and was scheduled to come home for the holidays on December 27th, aboard a train called the Silver Meteor. She did not hear the news about her family home being bombed until she arrived.

“When I got off the train in Titusville, I knew something was very, very wrong,” Moore said in an interview before her death in October 2015. “I had not turned on radio or television, so I didn’t know a thing about it until I got off the train. I noticed that my mother and father were not in front of all my relatives to greet me and they were always there.”

Moore was given the news by her Uncle George, who was home on leave from Korea.

“We got into his car and got settled, and the first thing I asked was ‘Well, where’s Mom and Dad?’ No one said anything for a while, it was complete silence. Finally, Uncle George turned around and he said ‘Well, Van, I guess I’m the one who has to tell you. Your house was bombed Christmas night. Your Dad is dead and your Mother is in the hospital.’ That’s the way I found out,” said Moore.

“I’ve never gotten over it. It was unbelievable.”

Moore insisted on being taken to her parent’s home. The blast had done extensive damage. She saw a huge hole in the floor of her parent’s room, into which their broken bed had collapsed. Wooden beams had fallen from the ceiling. Shards of broken glass covered the bed in the room she shared with her sister, Peaches.

Harry T. Moore was born November 18, 1905, in Houston, Florida, located in Suwannee County. At age 19, Moore graduated with a high school diploma from Florida Memorial College where he was a straight-A student, except for a B+ in French. Other students called him “Doc” because he did so well in all of his classes.

Moore moved to Mims in 1925 after being offered a job to teach fourth grade at the “colored school” in Cocoa. He met Harriette Vida Sims. They married and had two daughters. Moore, his wife, and both of their daughters graduated from Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona.

As a ninth grade teacher and principal at Titusville Negro School, Moore instilled in his students a sense of pride and a solid work ethic. A popular and skilled educator, Moore was fired for attempting to equalize pay for African American teachers in Brevard County.

Moore led a highly successful effort to expand black voter registration throughout the state, dramatically increased membership in the Florida branch of the NAACP, worked for equal justice for African Americans, and actively sought punishment for those who committed crimes against them.

“I do remember a lot of NAACP work with my Dad from the time I was able to understand what was going on,” said Juanita Evangeline Moore. “I helped him a lot with his mailing lists. We had a one-hand operated ditto machine. He usually typed out the stencil and he ran off whatever material he wanted to send out.”

Although the murders of Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore have never been solved, it is believed that members of the Ku Klux Klan from Apopka and Orlando planted the bomb on Christmas night.

Moore and his wife were killed 12 years before Medgar Evers, 14 years before Malcolm X, and 17 years before Martin Luther King, Jr., making them the first martyrs of the contemporary civil rights movement.

The Moore Cultural Complex in Mims features a civil rights museum and a replica of the Moore family home.