Pages from the Past

From 1972 to 1986, Gene Burnett wrote a column for Florida Trend about people and events instrumental in Florida’s past. Raised and educated in Florida, Burnett compiled his columns for Trend and other writings on the state’s history into a three-volume series of books on Florida history titled “Florida’s Past: People and Events that Shaped the State.” He died in 1991. Below are excerpts from some of his columns. Burnett’s books are available at pineapplepress.com.

Tobacco Woe
From our December 1975 issue

By 1910, “Tampa virtually lived off its only industry — cigars. … It accounted for 65 per cent of city revenues and 75 per cent of its payrolls. It moved Tampa from a sleepy get-by village of 2,000 in the mid-1880’s to 37,782 souls in 1910.”

A “great general cigarworkers strike” that summer led to a “shameful chapter of lynching, lawlessness and terror that shook the community and left deep scars for more than a generation.”

The Unlikely Governor
From our July 1977 issue

In 1932, David Sholtz rose from “the darkest of dark horses” to become Florida’s 26th governor.

“In a sense, Sholtz even ‘out-Cartered’ Jimmy Carter because he had ethnic and regional image problems that would have hog-tied any mere tourist, much less a seeker of the state’s highest office. … The son of immigrant parents, he was a Yankee and a lawyer who had lived in the state only 15 years. He was an honors graduate of that symbol of Eastern Establishment ‘pointyheadedness’ — Yale. He was also of Jewish ancestry. … Staggering handicaps enough — but only openers. Sholtz was a relative unknown. He had no support from the old line political organizations or bosses and virtually no funds for media advertising. … But he would win the nomination by the greatest majority ever garnered in the history of the state to that time.”

Swamp Trail
From our August 1982 issue

In a column about the developer of the Tamiami Trail, W.J. “Fingy” Conners, Burnett had this to say:

“He put a road over one of the most ‘impossible’ swamp-choked terrains in Florida, from West Palm Beach to Okeechobee City, bringing in 1924 the first highway linkup to the state’s west coast. … The 52-mile toll road was certainly an engineering feat and, when a jubilant throng of 15,000 gathered for the ribbon-cutting festivities,” Conners was hailed by the governor as ‘The Great Developer.’

Headed South
From our February 1987 issue

In a piece on Key West:

“When the Great Depression rolled over the nation in the 1930s, no one was surprised to see the two-mile by four-mile island shattered to its coral rock bottom, laid low by an economic coma that officials called ‘more acute and oppressive’ than any other in the country. By 1934, some 80% of Key West’s 11,600 citizens were on relief, a bare relief at that. … The historic city had taken a long spiral down from its colorful shipwrecking days, barely a century ago, when it was the richest city per capita in the country.”