More than three decades before SeaWorld opened in Orlando in 1973, Marineland of Florida was a major tourist attraction, hosting as many as 900,000 visitors annually.
Located between St. Augustine and Daytona Beach, Marineland started out as Marine Studios. Business partners W. Douglas Burden, Sherman Pratt, Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, and Ilya Tolstoy (grandson of Leo Tolstoy) envisioned a venue for filming underwater sequences for movies, but quickly realized the potential of the facility as a tourist destination.
“Marineland illustrated the connection between nature and spectacle,” says Florida historian Gary Mormino, author of the book Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams: A Social History of Modern Florida. “They originally conceived as Marine Studios as a motion picture facility for studying and filming sea specimens in an enclosed, oceanlike environment. But when the partners discovered that the blue bottlenose dolphins (also called porpoises) could be trained to perform tricks above water, the oceanarium became primarily a tourist attraction. The public oohed and aahed over leaping dolphins, a porpoise pulling a poodle on a surfboard, and sea lions barking at clowns.”
When Marineland opened on June 28, 1938, more than 20,000 visitors attended. Tourists weren’t the only people attracted to the new theme park.
“I was born in 1940,” says Flagler County historian Sisco Deen. “It closed during the (second world) war, but when it opened up in ‘46, after the war, I visited there as a child. I lived with my aunt and uncle and when they told me they were taking me to Marineland, I thought it was like the Marines in the service. But I really enjoyed it. It had two tanks. It was developed for a film studio but then people would come and look because they had the creatures of the deep in their natural, or pretty natural, habitat. You could observe them through little portholes in the side of the tanks. And so the tourists start coming.”
Marineland had literary connections that helped add to its popularity. The grandson of Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina was one of the park’s founders. Beloved Florida writer Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was married to Norton Baskin, who managed the Dolphin Restaurant and Moby Dick Lounge at Marineland. Renowned authors Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos also visited the bar at the park.
The original goal of using the facility as a place to shoot movies was realized. Portions of the 1954 film Creature from the Black Lagoon and the 1955 sequel Revenge of the Creature were filmed at Marineland. In the sequel, the captured creature is put on display at Marineland, and trained with a cattle prod.
For several decades, Marineland was one of Florida’s most popular tourist attractions, along with Silver Springs, Cypress Gardens, and Weeki Wachee.
“Marineland attracted huge crowds, in part because of the novelty of ‘spectacular nature,’ in part because of its location on A1A between St. Augustine and Daytona Beach, perfectly situated to snag Miami bound travelers,” says Mormino.
When Walt Disney World opened on October 1, 1971, it had a positive impact on Marineland, significantly boosting annual attendance. When SeaWorld opened a couple of years later, the impact on Marineland was devastating. SeaWorld was in direct competition with Marineland.
The University of Florida established the Whitney Marine Laboratory adjacent to Marineland in 1974.
In the mid-1980s, original owner Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney sold Marineland to a group of investors, beginning a series of resales of the park to new owners. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the park entered a state of disrepair. Eventually a not-for-profit corporation was established to keep Marineland going.
During a two year renovation beginning in 2004, the two original oceanarium tanks from 1938 were demolished. Lifelong Flagler County resident Ray Mercer visited the park as a young man when it first opened.
“It was very exciting for me to see the life in the water through the portholes,” Mercer says. “I went every chance I got.”
Today, the park still exists as Marineland Dolphin Adventure, a “hands-on” educational facility operated since 2011 by the Georgia Aquarium. Much of the former Marineland property is now owned by Flagler County and protected as the River to the Sea Preserve.
Visitors to Mount Dora’s Lakeside Inn relax in rocking chairs on the hotel’s 200 foot long veranda, enjoying warm Florida breezes.
People have been doing this since 1883.
“This hotel had been solidly operating for almost 20 years before Walt Disney was even born,” says Lakeside Inn’s current owner, Jim Gunderson.
Originally called the Alexander House, Lakeside Inn was built by Civil War veteran James Alexander and his business partners John Donnelly and John MacDonald. At the start of Florida’s tourism industry in the late 1800s and early 1900s, many hotels and inns were built throughout the state, but Lakeside Inn is one of just a few that have survived from that era.
At first, it wasn’t easy for tourists to get to the hotel.
“The typical way for northerners to come down would be either by train or ship to Jacksonville,” says Gunderson. “Then by lake steamer down the St. Johns River, eventually making their way through the Harris Chain of Lakes, through the Dora Canal, and here into Lake Dora. The trip from New York would take approximately a week, so they were a hearty group of tourists back in the day.”
By 1887, a railroad depot was constructed next to the hotel, bringing northern tourists within walking distance of the inn’s front door. This shortened travel time from New York to Mount Dora by several days.
In 1893, Alexander, Donnelly, and MacDonald sold the Alexander House to Emma Boone, who changed the name of the inn to Lake House. In 1903, Boone married George Thayer, and together they greatly expanded the facility into the group of buildings now known as Lakeside Inn.
Mr. and Mrs. Thayer doubled the size of the inn’s main building. They built the Gate House and the Sunset Cottage, adding larger rooms and suites. Under the Thayer’s management, the hotel thrived. During this period, the hotel was only open in the winter months, typically from December to April.
“For a number of years, the New York Chautauqua set up a winter experience down in the Mount Dora area,” says Gunderson. “In the month of March it brought in literally thousands of guests that would come down for a couple of weeks of education, knowledge building, and lectures. So things were hopping in this part of Florida tourism wise.”
The Edgerton family owned Lakeside Inn from 1924 to 1980. The hotel continued to be successful even as nearby competitors went out of business, burned down, or were torn down to make way for new development.
“As the coasts of Florida started to open up following the ‘Roaring 20s,’ it pulled a lot of tourism away from this area, but the inn continued to do well because people still had a love of Mount Dora,” Gunderson says.
President Calvin Coolidge was one of the people who enjoyed extended stays at Lakeside Inn. Following the end of his presidency in 1929, Coolidge and his wife spent a month at the hotel.
“It allowed Coolidge to just simply sit back in a rocking chair on the veranda as people do today, and just enjoy warm weather and perhaps meditative thought on life,” says Gunderson. “This was a very good place for him to be and he wrote very fondly of it in his memoirs and diaries.”
Photographs of Lakeside Inn through the decades are displayed on the lobby walls. Today, the hotel looks much as it did in the early twentieth century.
Maintaining an historic property is an ongoing effort that is never completely finished. Most days Gunderson’s wife Alexandra can be found working in the gardens around the grounds while he oversees various renovations. Both of the Gundersons are dedicated to restoring and maintaining the historic Lakeside Inn.
Lakeside Inn is the anchor of Mount Dora’s historic district which has many buildings from the early twentieth century now functioning as restaurants, bars, and specialty stores.
While the state of Florida is mostly flat, the gently rolling hills around Lakeside Inn are 184 feet above sea level, technically qualifying the town as a “mount.” Visitors who walk around the property of Lakeside Inn can boast that they have “climbed” Mount Dora.
Dr. Ben Brotemarkle is executive director of the Florida Historical Society and host of the radio program “Florida Frontiers,” broadcast locally on 90.7 WMFE Thursday evenings at 6:30 and Sunday afternoons at 4:00, and on 89.5 WFIT Sunday mornings at 7:00. The show can be heard online at myfloridahistory.org.
Florida is known around the world as the home of major theme parks such as Disney World, Universal Orlando, Sea World, and Busch Gardens. There are smaller theme parks here as well, including Marineland, Weeki Wachee, Gatorland and Dinosaur World.
The state tourism agency Visit Florida estimates that 94.7 million tourists came to Florida in 2013, most of them visiting at least one theme park.
Cypress Gardens was Florida’s first theme park. Created by entrepreneur and professional promoter Dick Pope in Winter Haven, Cypress Gardens opened on January 2, 1936, and closed on September 23, 2009.
Dick Pope was a flamboyant and successful promoter. His marketing efforts led to Cypress Gardens appearing on the covers of hundreds of magazines and in newspaper photographs across the country. The theme park became a popular setting for commercials, television shows, and films.
Lu Vickers is author of the book Cypress Gardens, America’s Tropical Wonderland: How Dick Pope Invented Florida.
“He would stage events at the gardens,” Vickers says, “but sometimes he would gather his employees and say ‘I’ve called the press and told them something big is happening today. Do you have any ideas?’ He didn’t mind creating a scene to get attention.”
A colorful botanical garden was the centerpiece of Cypress Gardens, but the park also featured water ski shows and boat rides. Beginning in 1940, the park became known for having Southern Belles walking the property in hoop skirts and posing for photographs.
The tradition of Southern Belles at Cypress Gardens started as an attempt to distract visitors from seeing damage to the park’s foliage.
“There was a really hard freeze,” Vickers says. “Julie Pope (Dick Pope’s wife) was the one who came up with the idea to dress a young lady in a Southern Belle outfit and stand her outside so that people would not notice that the flame vine had pretty much been burnt by the frost.”
From that day forward, Southern Belles could be found at Cypress Gardens. Later they were joined by Spanish conquistadors and Native American girls.
Celebrities including Elvis Presley, Johnny Carson, King Hussein of Jordon and many others came to Cypress Gardens. Aquatic film star Esther Williams, who made a popular series of swimming based musicals in the 1940s and ‘50s, was a frequent guest at the park. Williams promoted the venue with television specials. Her 1953 film “Easy to Love” was filmed at Cypress Gardens.
Before the Disney corporation built its first Florida theme park in 1971, Cypress Gardens was the most popular tourist destination in the state.
“It tied with the Grand Canyon for the number 1 attraction in the country in 1963,” Vickers says. “That’s how big it was.”
Disney World and its affiliated theme parks owe some of their overwhelming success to Florida’s first theme park.
While visiting Cypress Gardens prior to the construction of California’s Disneyland in 1955, Roy Disney called his brother and business partner Walt Disney from Dick Pope’s office. Roy Disney couldn’t wait to tell his brother how impressed he was with Pope’s theme park concept. People were happily paying good money to walk around a garden, stop for photos with costumed characters, ride in a boat, and watch an entertaining show or two!
Dick Pope welcomed Disney World to Florida. “He had no problem promoting other attractions,” Vickers says. “He felt that the more people who came to Florida, the more likely they were to come to his place, too.”
Unfortunately for Pope and Cypress Gardens, it didn’t work out that way.
With the opening of Disney World and other large theme parks, revenues at Cypress Gardens began to decline. Beginning in the early 1980s, a series of new owners took control of the park, including the corporations that owned Sea World and Busch Gardens.
In 2009, Cypress Gardens closed. Two years later, LEGOLAND Florida opened on the site. LEGOLAND features rides, shows, and a water park primarily aimed at children 12 and under. Miniature cities are constructed using the popular Lego building blocks.
The original botanical gardens of Cypress Gardens are intact at the heart of the park. Even the iconic Southern Belles remain, although they are now made of Legos.
Dr. Ben Brotemarkle is executive director of the Florida Historical Society and host of the radio program “Florida Frontiers,” broadcast locally on 90.7 WMFE Thursday evenings at 6:30 and Sunday afternoons at 4:00, and on 89.5 WFIT Sunday mornings at 7:00. The show can be heard online at myfloridahistory.org.
