Fun in the Sunshine City, Save the Date!

SAVE THE DATE! The Society for Commercial Archeology has announced the dates for its 2014 conference, "Fun in the Sunshine City", to be held April 9-12, 2014 in St. Petersburg, Florida. I have attended four previous conferences and am working with folks in the Planning Department from the city of St. Petersburg to organize next year's conference. We are creating a blockbuster opening reception, two epic bus tours, and a fascinating paper session. Details will be released soon, but at this point we are hoping to make stops at three vintage attractions and have closing dinner at Florida's oldest restaurant. And there will be shuffleboard! Stay tuned!

My journey to the Fountain of Youth

I feel like I need to go to confession, even though I am not Catholic. Father, forgive me for I have not blogged in almost six weeks–I'd confess to my readers. But the reason is good–my Fountain of Youth project is going to be published and be included in a museum exhibit!

In past blogs I've revealed my obsession with Poncebilia, the Fountain of Youth, and Florida's springs. As I traveled to sites around the state, I began to see a narrative develop and my initial thought was to create an exhibit for the Orange County Regional History Center. So I started collecting ephemera and taking photos to support that exhibit. When it became apparent the exhibit space wasn't available at the History Center, I shifted my goals to a book. Originally I thought I would merely collect images, create an outline and hand it over to my friend Joy to write. But as the project came more into view, we decided that I really need to be the one to write it. So I soldiered on–collecting, photographing and writing whenever I had a free moment.

As I was working on the project, I got an email from an individual in Gainesville who was collecting images for a similar book about the Fountain of Youth. While I couldn't share my images, (because of my own project), I found that this individual was a kindred spirit and she introduced me to the work of Gainesville artist Margaret Tolbert and her Aquiferious facebook page. This opened up a whole new world and the book grew to not only include images and text about Florida's Fountains of Youth in the past, but also content about the current and future states of Florida's springs. That's how I learned about the proposed  project threatening Silver Springs. When the Save Silver Springs artwork I created caught the eye of nature photgrapher John Moran and his girlfriend Leslie Gamble, we collaborated on posters for a protest. I ran into John again at a Glen Springs clean-up in Gainesville and he wanted to learn more about my book project. After showing him the content for my book and my original exhibit proposal, he invited me to be part of an exhibit he was planning for 2013 at the Florida Museum of Natural History, then titled "Amnesia Springs." He also loved my book and sent an email to the publisher of his book "Journal of Light," University Press of Florida.

Photo by John Moran of me at Glen Springs

Poster I created with John Moran and Leslie Gamble at the Silver Springs protest

Weeks passed after that initial email introduction and I kept collecting materials for the book, and refining the text with the intent of self publishing. Then I received a call from the publisher expressing interest in my project. From that point on, events happened at a rapid pace. The text was finalized and sent to readers with a pdf of a preliminary layout. The manuscript was sent two experts on the subject, both of whom are authors of books on similar subjects, and they both gave glowing recommendations. The book was then submitted for approval by the editorial board. After the board gave thumbs up the project was rushed into production so it would be ready for spring of 2013 and the 500th anniversary of Ponce's landing in La Florida. The final manuscript was submitted, a contract was signed and I went to work on the layout, expanding it to 144 pages.

Before I finalized the layout I delivered a paper at the Society for Commercial Archeology's Conference in New Jersey titled: "Finding the Fountain of Youth: Florida's Magical Waters as Roadside Attraction." As I am a graphic designer by occupation, not a writer, the book is driven by the layout, and I was fortunate that the publisher allowed me design it. The final layout was submitted last week, and the book is now in the publisher's hands. I am currently waiting for edits, and in order to make our print date the book needs to go to the printer by December.

My goal with the book was to create something that would appeal to an audience that would not normally purchase a book about Florida history. Full of pop culture imagery, it is designed to be eye-catching and easily readable. It explores how the myth of the fountain of youth has become part of the branding of Florida and how our adoption of that paradigm has led Floridians to make choices that aren't necessarily the best for our state. In a way the book chronicles my own journey that started at the Fountain of Youth and grew into my desire to document Ponce de Leon imagery throughout the state, and culminated in recent trips to Florida's magical springs. At each step on this journey, I had no idea what the next step would be. I was committed to making the project happen, but I didn't know how. But I kept pressing onward.

So 2013 looks to be a big year for Ponce and me. The book should hit the shelves sometime around the 500th anniversary of Ponce's arrival and my part of the exhibit at the Florida Museum of Natural History should open in March. There is much work to be done, and there are many details that still need to be worked out. But I'll keep on taking one small step at a time, believing that somehow it is going to work out to be something fabulous and wonderful, and that it can make a real difference for our state in the end.

Y'all Come Back Now: Hillbilly Iconography on the American Roadside

I recently had the honor of presenting at the paper session of the Society for Commercial Archeology's 2010 Conference, Odyssey in the Ozarks. It was the first time I'd ever done anything like this before, and I received great support. I'd like to acknowledge my father and brother for going on the Great Hillbilly Road Trip with me and Tim Hollis for so many great leads and information. Debra Jane Seltzer, queen of the roadside, actually sought out hillbilly imagery for me on her road trips and friends on Fickr like Jacob K let me utilize their photos for the presentation. The primary resources for the paper were "Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Legend" by Anthony Harkins, and "Tourism in the Mountain South: A Double-Edged Sword" by C. Brenden Martin. Additional sources included "Hillbillyland: what the Movies did to the Mountains and What the Mountains did to the Movies" by J.W. Williamson and "Land of the Smokies: Great Mountain Memories" by Tim Hollis.

The following is excerpted from "Y'all Come Back Now: Hillbilly Iconography on the American Roadside."

The Origins of the Hillbilly Stereotype

The Hillbilly is one of the most identifiable characters in American Popular culture. The bearded, overall-clad bumpkin with a corncob pipe and a jug of moonshine is unmistakable. As I undertook the task of documenting this iconic image’s use along the Roadside, it became apparent that to understand its prevalence, I had to trace its origins. I found that the character we know now, evolved over time, becoming mainstream in the early 20th century and growing so much in the awareness of the average American, that by the 1960s travelers in the Mountain South expected to see hillbillies at every stop.

One of the precursors of the stereotype can be found in the representations of the Arkansas Traveler story. The 1840 tale telling about a traveling politician who comes upon an old man fiddling in the rain, led to popular Currier & Ives prints and a musical version in 1847.


Mountain feuds captured the nation’s attention after extensive reporting in newspapers from 1870 -1910. The infamous hostilities between Kentucky’s Hatfield and McCoy clans greatly contributed to the way the people of the Mountain South were perceived.

The first appearance of the term “hillbilly” in print in The New York Journal in 1900 showed that the term already has negative connotations. Widespread distribution in America's growing media contributed to the hillbilly stereotype expanding in America’s consciousness like:

• Hillbilly Films
Moonshining and feuding were popular themes for silent films and by 1915 there were hundreds of moving pictures in this genre.


• Hillbilly Music
The first band to record using the name “Hillbilly” was Al Hopkins’ group in 1925 and ultimately this entire genre of music was called “Hillbilly music” until later in the century when it became known as Country music.

• Hillbilly Radio Characters
Bob Burns of Van Buren, Arkansas was famous for a homemade musical instrument made of stove pipe and whiskey funnel he called his “Bazooka”. His radio show about the people of Van Buren, included a hillbilly named Grandpa Snazzy whose likeness appeared on a number of postcards.


The Lum & Abner radio show ran for 24 years and led to six movies - Norris Goff and Chester Lauck created the radio series based on characters in Waters, Arkansas.


The Stereotype comes of Age
With the onset of the Great Depression, America cartoonists used the hillbilly character as a source of humor and inspiration for perseverance against great odds.


In 1934 artist Paul Webb created a cartoon called the "Mountain Boys" based entirely on his interpretation of hillbilly stereotypes of the time. His characters were widely reproduced on everything from matchbooks to a 1938 movie called Kentucky Moonshine starring the Ritz Brothers.

Even more popular was the Snuffy Smith character created by Bill DeBeck. Originally introduced in 1934 in the Barney Google comic strip, the Snuffy Smith comic continues to appear in funny pages today.


The most influential comic, however, was Al Capp’s Lil’ Abner with a circulation over 60 million readers. Before the comic ended in 1977, the heavily licensed characters of Dogpatch appeared in a Broadway musical, two feature length films, on records and on just about every product imaginable.


The Golden Age of the Hillbilly
Because of the exposure of the hillbilly character in all forms of popular media, by mid-century the entire nation was familiar with the stereotype.


The Hillbilly character reached it zenith in the 1960s due to the popularity of rural based TV shows, most notably the Beverly Hillbillies. The CBS sitcom premiered in 1962 and reached 6 million viewers a week. The show was created by Paul Henning who was intrigued with mountaineer culture, (he wrote for the Andy Griffith Show, created Petticoat Junction & produced Green Acres.) Rural-themed shows all faded from network television by early 1970s, with Hee Haw being the last to be dropped by from network airwaves.



The Roadside Hillbilly
While the 1960s marked the peak of the hillbilly stereotype in American popular culture, the character was a major part of roadside well before then.

Although the stereotype has been used throughout the nation, roadside use of the character was most extensive in the tourist areas of the Ozarks and Southern Appalachians. Tourists in the Mountain South expected to see Hillbillies and roadside entrepreneurs took full advantage of those expectations by feeding motorists a steady diet of hillbilly iconography.


Homespun Valley Mountaineer Village opened in Gatlinburg, Tennessee in 1951, made an effort to authentically re-create mountain culture, rather than perpetuating stereotypes. It re-created a mountaineer settlement with log cabins, an operating still, a mill and live hillbilly music every night.


Hillbilly Village opened in Pigeon Forge, Tenn, near Gatlinburg in 1954 and is still open today!

Hillbilly Golf in Gatlinburg, Tenn opened in 1971. Players ride an incline to the top of the hill to get to the start of the course, an idea borrowed from the incline in Chattanooga, the hometown of the attraction’s original owner).


Due to the popularity of Al Capp’s Lil’ Abner, Dogpatch became a common name for rural themed roadside destinations. The first was Dogpatch, Kentucky as the Lil’ Abner strip was originally set in the Bluegrass state. It opened in 1950; the gift shop relocated in 1970s to be closer to the interstate and remains in this location today.


Dogpatch Village in Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri was established in 1947 as a gas station and restaurant that sold souvenirs and evolved into a shopping attraction themed around the “mythical Ozark mountain pioneer lifestyle.”


Dogpatch USA Opened in 1968 in Marble Falls, Arkansas on 825 acres. Al Capp was partner in the attraction and got a portion of the gate. Capp, a Connecticut Yankee, had never visited the Ozarks, but thought the site was ideal for re-creating Lil Abner’s home town. The attraction had 300,000 visitors the first year but never more than 200,000/year after that. The unsuccessful addition of a Winter resort in 1972 help doom the park, as did the end of the Lil Abner comic strip in 1977. Management issues and a number of lawsuits forced it to close for good in 1993. Today it sits vacant, crumbing into the Ozarks.

Several Dogpatch restaurants opened as well, including one in Munsing, Michigan that has been open since 1966.


The popularity of Snuffy Smith comic strip led to a 1960s attempt to start a Snuffy’s Shanty fast food franchise. There were a couple locations in Florida, but it is unclear if they ever had much success.

Wilsons Restrunt & Motel, was on the “the quiet side of the Smokies” in Townsend, Tennessee used a Moonshine still and plywood hillbilly characters to attract roadside visitors.

The restaurant at the Hillbilly Inn in Branson, Missouri had a reputation for serving the finest in Ozark home cooking is apparently still open as a karaoke bar.

The Mountaineer Inn of Asheville, North Carolina opened in 1939, with a more recent addition in back built in '60s or '70s. The 40 foot tall neon Mountaineer is one of four neon signs including one of Mammy Yokum from Lil Abner. Today the motel is still open, affordable, and remarkably unchanged.

While the neon figures of the Mountaineeer Inn may be the most striking examples of roadside hillbilly imagery, the figure has proven to be a successful outdoor advertising icon, attracting would-be customers for decades. While certainly less abundant than in the hey days of the 1960s, the stereotype can still be found from Niagara Falls to Washington State. The iconic Hillbilly appears to be firmly entrenched in American popular culture.



Since 1977 there has been an annual Hillbilly Days festival in Pikeville, Kentucky put on by the Shriners.

Successful new restaurants like Shiners in Clayton, Georgia and Hillbilly Hot Dogs in West Virginia still pop up with the same stereotypical iconography used throughout the last century.


Examples are still seen in contemporary media, even The Cartoon Network currently has a show called “Squidbillies” based on hillbilly squids living in North Georgia. Even Mountain Dew brought back Willie the Hillbilly from their 1960s ads and packaging.

When used in a derogatory manner, the hillbilly stereotype is still considered offensive, yet it can also be used as term of regional pride symbolizing independence and resourcefulness, traits I’ve hopefully inherited from my own Appalachian family.

Last one to leave turn the lights out

We pulled into the Mt. Gaylor area early on our bus tour of U.S. 71 in the Boston Mountains of Arkansas. The previous tour of the SCA's Odyssey in the Ozarks Conference stopped at over-the-top kitschy icons like the fading ruins of the Dinosaur World attraction and the gigantic Christ of the Ozarks. So far on this tour we'd seen less flashy resources, stuff that is closer to real roadside archeology than 20th century pop culture icons.

First we stopped at a narrow bridge listed on the National Register of Historic Places on the original concrete section of U.S. 71. Then we explored the area around Our Lady of the Ozarks Shrine, with it's folk art gift shop and surrounding tourist cabins. These quaint places were like time capsules from an earlier time before interstate travel ripped the character away from the roadside.

The photographs from the tour book of the Mt. Gaylor complex didn't show much. Two old buildings on either side of the road and an observation tour. When we pulled over, however, I immediately noticed there was much more to this site than I originally anticipated. We were warned not to go behind the buildings fronting the road, as the old tourist cabins were rented out as apartments and they may not appreciate our gawking. But two friendly dogs rushed to greet us and made us feel welcome as we stepped off the bus.

I found a richness of details and started snapping pictures immediately. Wonderful pre-digital gas pumps guarded a two story stone structure with intricate rockwork. A small building of distressed wood was marked with a lone porcelin letter "N". Antiques still filled the long vacant gift shops straddling the road. Odd objects were left outside in bizarre arrangements looking almost like art installations. The skeleton of a wonderful vintage chaise lounge sat rusting away atop a rooftop observation deck. From the "ruins" of this site it was apparent that this was once home to thriving businesses. But not for a long time.

It was tough to see a place with so much history fading away, and it seemed like we were serious archeologists exploring long deserted ruins like Mayan temples or Roman forums. But as I approached the bus to leave, a voice called out from the second story window behind the gas pumps. "I can come down and tell you the history of the place if you'd like," said the voice, "I'll be down in a minute."

The occupants of the loaded bus waited patiently as Ruby Jo Bellis climbed up the steps and oriented herself with the vehicle's intercom system. "I'm the last one living here," she began, "I sleep up there in the same bedroom that my crib lied in when I was a baby." It wasn't long, however, before Ruby broke down in tears, "my son died here too, and my father died just down the road." She explained that her father, who knew the family's livelyhood was threatened by the completion of an interstate to the West, tragically met his end in a car accident on the same road that had sustained them for three generations.

"Lots of good things happened here too", Ruby explained, "right behind us we used to have a little train that went around the lake." The rock buildings of the tourist stop were built by her grandparents, and disagreements with her family have left her the last family member to live on the property. "I'll be here as long as I can pay the taxes and pull the weeds."

The emotional scene effected all of us on the bus, and SCA co-president Nancy Sturm gave her a tourbook and conference t-shirt. The rest of us gave Ruby perhaps what she wanted most of all; an audience to hear her story and keep the memory of this magical roadside place alive.

10 Most Endangered Roadside Places

Vacant roadside motel on Hwy. 27, Clermont, FL

The Society for Commercial Archeology Announces:
Falling by the Wayside: 10 Most Endangered Roadside Places, 2009
Call for Nominations

Standing along our nation’s highways, main streets and rural country roads is the physical evidence of our early road culture, the remnants of our collective travel experience throughout the twentieth. These physical elements include gas stations, diners, drive-ins, motor courts, retail strips, theatres, roadside parks and a variety of roadside curiosities, to name the obvious. They are places and structures that today capture the imagination and elicit feelings of nostalgia and curiosity. As time passes the recognition and preservation of such places is vital to their function as historical record and personal benchmark.

Places of roadside culture are those that we have all experienced, that we can all relate to and that we can all play a roll in protecting. How many times have you driven by a decaying roadside icon and wondered why no one seems to care that it appears ready to fall down? Are you concerned that an important local landmark of road or commercial culture is or could become threatened by development or neglect? The Society for Commercial Archeology is creating a way for you to take action and make your concerns known. We are announcing the creation of Falling by the Wayside: 10 Most Endangered Roadside Places; a list that will seek to compile the ten most threatened roadside places in the country each year. Your help is requested to make the list a comprehensive and diverse compilation of noteworthy places that deserve the attention and recognition of the preservation community and the public at large. We are currently accepting nominations for the 2009 list, see details below.

Through the creation of the list we hope to access the vast resources of SCA and translate them into a tangible resource that will draw attention to commercial and roadside places that are in danger of being lost or drastically altered. An endangered list is a viable and potentially powerful way of giving a voice to threatened places. We encourage your participation.

Falling by the Wayside Guidelines for Nomination:

Nomination: Anyone can nominate a resource to the list. We welcome and request nominations from SCA membership and the general public.

Criteria: Elements eligible for inclusion will be those that fall within the scope of SCA’s stated interests and mission: architectural elements and cultural landscapes that are related to roadways, highways and road culture, including, but not limited to diners, drive-ins, coffee houses, gas stations petroliana, motels, hotels, tourist cabins, motor courts, retail centers, theaters, roadside curiosities, and roadside sculpture.

Scope of inclusion: A date range will not be pre-established, however; regardless of age, nominations must clearly express the historical and community significance of the resource proposed for inclusion and fulfill all other required nomination criteria.

Nomination Process: To nominate a resource to the list please complete the nomination form posted below and submit it to the SCA by July 20, 2009. The nomination form requests information regarding the physical location and ownership of the resource along with descriptive information outlining history, significance and current threat. If you have questions regarding the nomination process please contact Joanna Dowling of the SCA Advocacy Committee at joanna.dowling@gmail.com

Selection: Elements will be selected for inclusion on the list by the SCA advocacy committee based on the information provided through the nomination process, additional information will be requested as necessary.

Nomination Deadline: The nomination deadline for the 2009 list is July 20th.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE NOMINATION FORM

Announcement: The completed list will be announced in the fall of 2009

The above content was from an email sent byt the Society for Commercial Archeology.

Citrus stand, long vacant, Mt. Dora, FL

Abandoned Moderne beauty, Orlando, FL

The Lunch Box Restaurant, awaiting demolition, Orlando, FL