Florida Frontiers: The Weekly Newspaper Articles of the Florida Historical Society is a weekly newspaper article covering history-based events, exhibitions, activities, places and people in Florida. The newspaper articles premiered in January 2014. We explore the relevance of Florida history to contemporary society and promote awareness of heritage and culture tourism options in the state.
The Jewish Museum of Florida is housed in two adjacent Art Deco buildings that originally served as the first synagogue and Jewish school in Miami Beach. The Congregation Beth Jacob opened in 1929. A larger synagogue was constructed next door in 1936, and the original building served the Jewish community in other ways. By 1995, the synagogue had moved back into the smaller building, and the Jewish...
Last Friday’s test flight of the Orion capsule takes America one step closer to reestablishing manned missions into space. A new monument at Space View Park in Titusville provides the opportunity to reflect upon this country’s last manned space program. The Columbia was launched for the first time on April 12, 1981, beginning NASA’s 30 year space shuttle program. Planning for the shuttle program...
Christmas 1837 was not particularly festive for a group of U.S. Army soldiers marching through what is now east Orange County. Instead of celebrating with their families, the soldiers built a fort on the St. Johns River. A replica of Fort Christmas is located in the rural community of Christmas, about ten miles west of Titusville. Even before Florida became a Territory of the United States in 1821...
Tradition holds that the first Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1621, as English Pilgrims at Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts shared a bountiful harvest with their Native American neighbors. The first Thanksgiving celebration in North America actually took place in Florida. Fifty-five years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, colonists in St. Augustine shared a feast of thanksgiving...
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...
American war veterans and the conflicts they participated in are well represented in the archive at the Library of Florida History in Cocoa. The Joseph Marshall Papers detail the activities of a Loyalist regiment in St. Augustine during the American Revolution of the 1770s and ‘80s. The archive houses the East Florida Constitution, created as a result of the United States invasion of Spanish East...
A pair of tattered, well-worn boots with holes on the bottom and scrapes on the side is on display in the Florida Historic Capitol Museum in Tallahassee. The boots belonged to “Walkin’ Lawton” Chiles, one of Florida’s most respected and influential politicians. During his four decade career in the Florida House of Representatives, the Florida State Senate, the United States Senate, and as a two...
More than five centuries ago, Spanish conquistador Ponce de León used celestial navigation to guide his ships to the land he would name La Florida. Today, the Hubble Space Telescope provides us with incredibly detailed images of celestial bodies that Ponce could have only imagined. With the event “A New Era of Discovery” to be held November 14 at the Brevard Museum of History and Natural Science...