The Swamp Peddlers
How Lot Sellers, Land Scammers, and Retirees Built Modern Florida and Transformed the American Dream
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4854871 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Gregory W Bush (University of Miami, corresponding author), Gregory Bush (University of Miami Retired, , Coral Gables, Florida) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 109 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 700-701 |
| Publication date | 2022-12-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jahist/jaac428 |
| OpenAlex | W4311737271 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
Florida swampland produced a notably egregious variation of earlier patterns of land fever in the United States through grossly unethical sales techniques alongside political corruption in a peculiarly large-scale modern fashion. Jason Vuic has written a selective account of mostly southwestern Florida land-development corps who preyed upon retired and low-income folks in the postwar era who had to put little down for their illusory piece of paradise. The installment land sales industry encouraged retirees to put $10 down and pay $10 a month for a homesite on which they could later build their dreams. The problem was that these buyers were often duped, buying land surrounded by little infrastructure such as parks, community centers, or even sewer systems or sidewalks. Scams abounded with sales gimmicks and sponsored trips that brought 720,000 potential buyers to Florida a year by the late 1960s. Later mortgage fraud schemes built on earlier episodes. In the early 1920s, Barron Collier had purchased 1.3 million acres in Lee County in southwest Florida and demanded that his land become its own county named after him. Favoring what he called “constructive development,” including a road from Naples to Miami (p. 91). His sons eventually developed Marco Island out of a chunk of its southern islands, dubbed “the last paradise
Allotment · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Cartography · Dream · Economics · Geography · Language change · Miami · Paradise · Political science · Politics · Renting · Scale (ratio · Swamp · TRIPS architecture · American Environmental and Regional History · Ecology · Engineering · History · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies
| Citations per year | 0.33 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2023 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |