Wild Card: The Scholarly Interview
Below is an interview with Dr. Brian Rucker, a history professor at the University of West Florida. Dr. Rucker describes himself as a seventh generation Santa Rosan and has published several books related to West Florida culture and history.
1.) How would you describe the culture of Northwest Florida? Historically, this region is an old-fashioned rural agricultural area that evolved from the frontier (the Florida Cracker lifestyle) of sawmills, the turpentine industry, fishing camps, and small farm homesteads. This has gradually evolved with an infux of peoples to the beach areas and this has resulted in coastal tourism to the panhandle.
2.) What impact has the military had on Northwest Florida? Tremendous. Ever since the American acquisition of Florida in 1821, the military has played a huge role in the economy of Pensacola and other areas — Fort Barrancas, Fort Pickens, the Pensacola Navy Yard (1826–1911) and then the Pensacola Naval Air Station (1914-present), Whiting Field (1940s-), Eglin Air Force Base (1940s-), Tyndall Air Force Base (1940s-). After World War II these bases continued to exert a strong role in the local economies. The personnel who have gone to these bases were also exposed to the scenic landscapes of the area, and many returned here to retire.
3.) I read that Pensacola area residents once voted to add themselves to the state of Alabama. Would you say that northwest Florida has a lack of affiliation with peninsular Florida? Historically, Pensacola and West Florida have always been part of Florida going back to the early explorers and colonial period. Pensacola was permanently established in 1698. The problem was, as the state of Florida developed, there were inadequate transportation links from east to west to connect Pensacola to Tallahassee and points eastward. The panhandle was beginning to feel like an unwanted stepchild of Florida after the Civil War, and one of the responses to this dissatisfaction was to tie it together with the construction of the 1880s Pensacola and Atlantic RR which was the very first East-West railroad connection that joined Pensacola to the rest of the state. But, even today, the panhandle is often neglected in books, and even maps, where it is often lopped off. It is even in a different time zone (Central) from the rest of the state.
4.) What issues have consistently plagued the era, and what issues will proceed in the future? Is there a noticeable divide in political power? Finding a sustainable economy. First, it was the longleaf yellow pine, but shortsighted people cut down all the virgin forests. After this, they were always searching for the next thing — horticulture, satsuma oranges, tourism. A lot of people who grow up here have to move away to get decent paying jobs. There are a lot of retirees here, so that creates a big gap between the age ranges. And, the coastal areas have been recently populated in the last few decades by people who have come from elsewhere and who many times do not have the same cultural and political make-up of the inland areas. That is why there is a divide. The newcomers in the coastal areas often think they have all the political and cultural clout and often tend to be overbearing know-it-alls, and the inland traditional folks often resent the coastal population for those reasons. Having county seats centrally located, however inconvenient to the coastal inhabitants, does help cater to all the people in the far reaches of the counties, northern as well as the southern coastal areas. You can’t please all the people all the time.
5.) Excluding the 30A area, many of my peers regard Destin as one of the premier upscale vacation destinations. How have the different beaches along the Gulf Coast been able to develop different personalities, if you will. In the early 1900s, before roads, tourists from northern Alabama and Tennessee would take the train to Pensacola and then take excursion steamboats to tiny resort hotels along Santa Rosa Sound and Choctawhatchee and St. Andrews bays. Those were the first beginnings of tourism in the area. In the 1930s with the development of new roads and bridges, the beach areas finally became accessible to more people and this is where tourism really takes off. Tim Hollis’ fun book Florida’s Miracle Strip: From Redneck Riviera to Emerald Coast describes the evolution of this tourism in the mid-20th century. Also, Harvey Jackson’s book, The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera: An Insider’s History of the Florida-Alabama Coast, gives some insight to how the beach communities evolved in the last 100 years. Pensacola Beach touted its Casino complex (non gambling) in the 1930s when a bridge connected it to Pensacola proper. But it grew slowly and did not have the same party atmosphere that PCB eventually developed. Fort Walton Beach had only a small fraction of Santa Rosa Island being available to them (Okaloosa Island), but they did boast the Gulfarium. Destin grew from a small, sleepy fishing village in the 1940s and 1950s, but by the 80s it had turned into a big tourist-driven area.
6.) What enabled Pensacola to develop into a city with a beach, rather than a beach with a city attached? Pensacola had a long industrial and military history many years before beaches became popular. It was a city first; the beach and tourism element came much later for Pensacola than other coastal communities (for early attempts at tourism, see my book Image and Reality: Tourism in Antebellum Pensacola (Patagonia Press, 2009). Pensacola was not able to achieve a bridge and road connection to its beach on Santa Rosa Island until 1931. Before that time, excursion party boats would take early travelers over to the island. The bridge/road connection changed everything, but the beach was also a distance away from the city, so the two remained rather separate entities.
7.) Are there any stories or interesting historical facts you would like to share about the Pensacola area? When I was growing up in the early 1960s, Navarre Beach was the primary beach my family went to (we lived about 18 miles north of Navarre on highway 87). A bridge had been constructed to the island in the early 1960s. There was a fishing pier, and a small pavilion with a few stores and hot dog stands. That was all that was on Navarre Beach back then. Without any thought of environmental impact, they had dredged a pass just east of the pier, but Hurricane Betsy (ca. 1965) closed it up shortly after they opened it. You could go down there for years and still see the remains of it. In the 1970s they opened the Holidome (Holiday Inn), and that is where they filmed part of Jaws 2. You could go down there and see the huge mechanical shark out there close to the beach. A lot of locals got jobs as extras on the movie. I believe the Gulf Breeze High band performed in the movie. In the early days, there were no houses or stores on Highway 87 from Holley until Highway 98. Just a few cottages and businesses on Highway 98. I have early home movies that show how pristine Navarre Beach was back in those days. In fact, in the mid-1980s, during the winter months, you could travel from Gulf Breeze along Highway 98 and up 87 south around midnight and not see another car the entire way!
