In Search of Everlasting Youth

Oh, did you know that Ponce de Leon's fabulous "fountain of youth" is to be found in St. Augustine, Florida, U.S.A.?  Peggy and I passed near  this bright and brassy tourist attraction this past June but didn't quite have the time to stop in.

Castillo de San Marcos, 17th Century Spanish Fort, St. Augustine, Florida

Old City Gates, St. Augustine

The historical Ponce de Leon actually asked the King of Spain to finance a trip to the New World to search for this spring which promised it would "wash away the earthly years of man and forthwith restore to him the freshness and strength of youth" ("Florida - The Fountain of Youth" by John Oliver La Gorce, National Geographic Magazine, January, 1930, p. 1).

Senor de Leon "finally made his landfall one beautiful morning soon after Easter Sunday, in the year 1512, as many historians hold, and, casting anchor, went ashore with sword, cross, and royal decree, somewhere near the mouth of the placid St. John's River, and gave his "island" the charming name of Florida" (p.1).  "Florida" means 'flowers.'

This was Mr. Gorce's fanciful introduction to an article describing the Florida of 1930.  In that year, "Florida is still in sense a pioneer state.  Her growth has been spotty, haphazard, marked by local spurts and lapses, seemingly a precocious child trying to run before she walks" (p.3).

At that time, the state imported much of its food, two-thirds of the needed milk and butter, most of the eggs and chicken, yet it discarded the surplus fruit and vegetables it grew.  The tourist trade was extremely important in 1930, as it is today.

"Sun makes climate, and climate with the aid of trade winds, makes Florida.  She tilts her sunburned nose so far down toward the Tropics that only here, in all the United States, can you pick coconuts from their lofty habitat - that is, if you climb well!" (p.3).  Now we also can enjoy that tropical climate and palm trees in our State of Hawaii.

Friend, Peggy, at the Florida Welcome Center, June, 2013, next to Palm Tree.

 "Through long, dull months she drowses and suns herself, yet from December to the Ides of March, gay, boisterous, and bizarre, she affords an astounding spectacle of massed humanity, idle, yet often athletically active, probably without parallel anywhere" (p.3).

"On Tampa's main street a giant scoreboard showing weekly figures of attendance at competing churches thus proving that sun-hunters are also God-fearing" (p.4).  On our trip to Florida, Peggy and I saw many beautiful and active churches from Jacksonville to Port St. Lucie.

Altar at St. Bernadette's Catholic Church, Port St. Lucie, Florida, June, 2013.

The Old Spanish Mission Building, "reputed to be the oldest European-made structure in the United States" is now a museum in St. Augustine (photo caption, p. 7).

Mr. La Gorce reported on 'alligator farms' in Florida.  We saw a tourist "Alligator Farm" this past June near the St. Augustine Lighthouse. There was a long alligator in the wild swamp on the Kennedy Space Center grounds when we toured by bus.  I was not quick enough to snap a photo.

My brother, Don, in Port St. Lucie, Florida, lives on a lake shore.  I asked him, "Are there any alligators in the lake?"  Don chuckled, "The lakes in Florida are all connected by underground tunnels for flood control.  They say that if there are no ducks on a lake, there are alligators.  Do you see any ducks?"

There were no ducks!

Private lake, Port St. Lucie, Florida, from my brother's back porch.

In 1930, there was a boast about Florida's large cities: "When I came to Miami after the Spanish-American War (1898), it had 300 people," said a leading banker.  He continued, "Today we have 157,000 residents" (p. 10).  Metro Miami in 2013 may truly boast of residents: 5.8 MILLION!

The Ponce de Leon Hotel, now Flagler College, St. Augustine, Florida

Henry Flagler, due to his fortune in railroads, built the ornate Ponce de Leon Hotel in 1888.  It was wired with electric lights installed by Thomas Edison.  The dining room Tiffany Glass windows are now worth $40 million.  Peggy and I enjoyed every room of our tour of Flagler College.

FYI: In 1930, "Cuba is our second best customer in all Latin America . . .from Key West now giant ferries carry 30 loaded (freight train) cars each, cars that float over to Havana, and then run all over the Cuban lines" (photo caption, p. 11).  The cars were loaded with manufactured goods and food.

Even in 1930, Golfers could play on good courses "when northern playing would require snowshoes" and "strings of big league baseball teams train hereabout every Spring" (p. 19).

FYI: "Snowbirds" referred not only to tourists but to workers in 1930.  "Thousands come each winter to work in hotels, stores, garages, and in the handling of the immense food crops" (p. 19).

St. Petersburg calls itself  "The Sunshine City . . . No other city gives more thought to the comfort of its visitors or lives more completely on what they spend" (p. 23).

A surprise for me from this 1930 article is the use of "Solar heaters installed on the roof of an apartment. . . water circulated in the pipes through the heating boxes, is stored in an insulated tank ready for use at a temperature just short of the boiling point" (photo caption, p. 46).

The famous inventor, Thomas A. Edison, was living in 1930 and worked in his laboratory at Ft. Myers.  "He seeks a native source of rubber.  Thousands of latex-yielding weeds, vines, and trees have been tested" (p. 47).  Florida, at that time, and still, perhaps today, was "an experimental plant laboratory" (p. 50).

FYI: Do you like the taste of avocado?  "Among exotic fruits that have found a foothold here is the avocado, often called "alligator pear."  In old days South Sea sailors called it "midshipmen's butter" (p. 50).

Do you enjoy the bright red poinsettias at Christmas?  In the 1930 Florida gardens, it "grows profusely" (photo caption, Color Plate XIII).

Even with the knowledge that over-exposure to sun causes cancer, today beaches everywhere are full of sunbathers.  Most, hopefully, use sun-blocking lotion.  At St. Petersburg in 1930,there was so much sunshine that one of the city's newspaper publishers gave away "the entire home edition . . . every day the sun fails to make an appearance before it goes to press" (photo caption, XIV).

Mr. La Gorce briefly writes of Florida's hurricanes "prior to 1926. . . no storms of such terrific magnitude had been recorded thereabout for a quarter of a century" (p. 93).  Yet, "Florida's people, who, though stricken, were unbowed by misfortune and rising up, marched on to rebuild and rebeautify. . . Yes, Floridians have won their place in the sun" (p. 93).

Reading this long article was like re-visiting the wonderful, sunny State of Florida!