Bloom Town! The Amazing Tale About How Cypress Gardens Put Florida on the Map
The year was 1936, smack dab in the middle of the Great Depression. A gallon of gas cost you 10 cents, and a Studebaker car was $655.1 It sounds affordable today, but back then, there was little to go around. Nevertheless, big things were happening! The World Olympics, the reelection of FDR, the publication of Gone with the Wind…
But that wasn’t all. While Gone with the Wind transported its readers out of the Dust Bowl, and back to the Antebellum South, a man named Richard “Dick” Pope was busy transforming a Florida marshland into the most successful swamp in America– and into a place that was tailor-made for the likes of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara!
Planting the Seed
The natural product of travel is tourism, and with advances in transportation like paved roads and Model Ts, roadside attractions started popping up all over the United States in the 1920s.2 Dick Pope was keen to get in on the action. Even as a youngster, Dick was said to have “an idea a minute,” making him the perfect fit for the founding era of tourism.3
Dick’s wife, Julie, was a fellow entrepreneur, and in fact, Julie herself can be credited with planting the seed of Dick’s big idea: Cypress Gardens. Julie had read an article in her Good Housekeeping magazine about a banker who charged admission to view his estate. Now wasn’t that something? Finding it of interest, she shared it with her husband. As soon as Dick finished skimming the article he exclaimed, “we’ll build a garden and attract visitors to Winter Haven!”4
Tilling the Ground
Winter Haven was founded in 1845, not long after Florida herself had just become a state.5 The town had steadily grown, especially helped along by land speculation and the boom of the “Roaring Twenties.” Now Dick Pope had a plan that would grow a botanical garden and continue to nurture Winter Haven, and ultimately, Florida.
Dick and Julie got right to work beautifying the canals and lakes of Winter Haven. Initially, Dick was dubbed “Swami of the Swamp” because people in the press said the land could never be anything but a swamp!6 (Today, folks would probably nickname him “Shrek!”) Because of this, the Depression, original funding for the project was canceled. However, Dick and Julie believed in their idea and hired 30 men to come work in the swamp with shovels and buckets for a dollar day. Not afraid of the dirt, Dick worked in the mud right alongside them!
Although Dick was busy digging, Julie knew about flowers and was the real “green thumb.” Dick himself said, “Without Julie, there never would have been a Cypress Gardens, ‘cause I didn’t know a petunia from an azalea when we started.”7 What began as ryegrass and 300 dollars’ worth of azaleas and camellias would eventually blossom into 8,000 varieties of plants!8 These were imported from across the globe as the Popes traveled, and they came from over 90 different countries! 9
Talk about flower power and a power couple!
Now, you might be asking, what about the plant that provided the garden with its namesake? One source says, “The Popes named the park for the lovely cypress trees that rimmed the shores of the lake.”10 At the same time, another claims the name originated from a business deal: “Pope got building materials from a cypress growers’ association in exchange for naming his park after their product.”11 Regardless of where the name sprouted from, several ancient cypress trees did stand sentinel in Cypress Gardens.
Watching it Sprout
Dick and Julie had proved the press wrong and turned 16 acres of swamp into an enchanted garden. In 1935, the Popes’ Cypress Gardens was dedicated by the governor of Florida – an indication that the Garden wasn’t just an icon of Winter Haven but of the entire state.12 On January 2, 1936, Cypress Gardens opened to the public, charging an admissions fee of 25 cents to stroll the winding paths that wandered by sparkling lakes, towering trees, and cheerful flowers of every hue imaginable. It was a walk-through paradise and a quarter well spent!
In 1940 the Cypress Gardens developed the first theme park “characters” in the form of Southern Belles. The story goes that Julie told a female worker to put on an Antebellum dress – both warm and eye-catching – and flirt with visitors at the entrance to distract them from a huge, dead vine killed in a cold snap.13 The distraction worked, a temporary fix became a tradition, and Belles became an integral part of the Cypress Gardens experience.
The theme of Cypress Gardens was Florida and the Belles bespoke Florida’s history. But if that didn’t make the Popes’ theme obvious enough, a Florida-shaped swimming pool was later installed. It’s also worth noting that, while Walt Disney is often credited with creating the concept of the “theme park,” Cypress Gardens had taken root thirty five years before Walt Disney World became a reality. Dick is called “the man who invented Florida,” but he also deserves the accolade of “the man who invented theme parks!”
Watching it Blossom
Cypress Gardens kept growing, not only in tourist numbers or the number of acres (eventually reaching 200!) and in attractions. Electric boats were already puttering around the Garden’s canals, but in 1943, its beautiful lakes took on a new role and became watery stages for water ski shows! However, this happened quite by accident!
While Dick was serving in WWII, soldiers on leave saw a photo in a newspaper of water skiers being pulled by a boat at Cypress Gardens.14 They came to the logical but erroneous conclusion that Cypress Gardens had a “water show!” Lucky for them, Julie was not one to disappoint! She rounded up her children and friends and put on Cypress Gardens’ first water ski show, completely off the cuff! The following weekend, they had a happy crowd of 800 soldiers watching, and Cypress Gardens was dubbed “water ski capital of the world!”15
Watching it Bloom
Cypress Gardens was simply a beautiful place to be, from the glistening lakes to the gorgeous Belles and gargantuan selection of flowers. It was especially unique because its beauty could transcend reality and translate extremely well into film. Pictures were produced for the Florida Department of Commerce to use to promote tourism to the state. The phenomenon also turned Cypress Gardens into a Hollywood hotspot!
Several full-length movies were filmed on location, including “On an Island With You,” “Easy to Love,” parts of “Moon Over Miami,” and “This is Cinerama.”16 Elvis Presley, Esther Williams, and Johnny Carson were just a few who frequented the Gardens; though they were the stars, the natural beauty of Cypress Gardens was a real scene-stealer!
With the Hollywood connection, the Gardens’ merits were more broadly advertised, and “the park grew to enormous popularity and at one point tied with the Grand Canyon as the country’s number one tourist attraction.”17
Being an icon of Florida and the country, they participated in celebrating America’s 200th birthday in 1976. How? Cypress Gardens constructed a birthday “cake” of living flowers! The “cake” was 20 feet tall, adorned with 7,000 flowers, and was kept in bloom the entire year of the bicentennial!
Also, there were four candles atop the “cake” to represent the four presidents of the United States who had been assassinated during their service in office. Just as Cypress Gardens paid tribute to Florida’s history, they outdid themselves in paying their respect to American history.
But Cypress Gardens didn’t stop there! In the 1990s, the Gardens grew to include the Cypress Roots Museum, a Biblical Garden populated by plants named in the Bible, and “Wings of Wonder” Butterfly House featuring over 1,000 free-flying butterflies! Perhaps the most astounding addition to Cypress Gardens was “Banana Boy,” the 14-foot albino python, who sounds both terrifying and adorable. 18
Although Cypress Gardens grew, it never outgrew its original intention – to be a symbol of Florida and provide tourists with a day in paradise. However, as we will explore in the next installment, Florida outgrew Cypress Gardens. Competition moved in, the world began to change, and natural beauty had a hard time holding the attention of a society now geared toward flashing lights and virtual reality. I know, it’s a downer, right? But let me leave you with a word of hope and mini-spoiler: all is not lost for Cypress Gardens, for it was deeply rooted and deeply loved, and such a thing is not easily destroyed…
Cover Image
Photo: Mike McBey via Flickr
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