Tropic of Hopes: California, Florida, and the Selling of American Paradise, 1869-1929

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After the Civil War, two states emerged as America’s paradise destinations. Transformed from remote, sparsely populated locales into two of the most publicized destinations in the country, California and Florida also became the most desirable. Private companies, state agencies, and journalists all lent a hand in creating the seductive, expansionist imagery that promoted the semitropical states, selling the idea of an attainable paradise within the United States.

Henry Knight examines and compares the way the two states were promoted, adding to existing historiographies on California and Florida while providing expert analysis of how railroad kingpins, land barons, agriculturalists, and chambers of commerce invented and popularized an image of these states as the American Paradise.