Bubble in the Sun documents the history of Florida as the last frontier developed before Alaska. Knowlton follows a cast of fascinating developers and who saw opportunity for luxury within the swampland of Florida, and he makes a compelling case Florida land speculation as an early cause of the Great Depression. 

I enjoyed Knowlton’s writing style and his detail in bringing main characters to life. Developers founded Florida fast with an eye on wealth and luxury, and the people it attracted laid the cornerstone for the perception of the state today. I also found the engineering required to turn swampland into buildable land intriguing. 

Favorite Quotes:

“The land boom, not the stock market, was the true catalyst for the disasters that befell the nation as overvalued housing and property prices everywhere began to collapse in the wake of the Florida debacle. The eroding economic fundamentals and collapsing consumer confidence finally reached Wall Street and pulled down the stock market, bringing an end to the frantic nationwide party so aptly named the Roaring Twenties.”

“By virtually inventing the resort towns of Ormond, Palm Beach, Delray, Deerfield, Fort Lauderdale, Homestead, and Miami, and by building the Florida East Coast Railway the length of Florida to service them, well before there were decent roads, Flagler had laid down the main infrastructure artery—the freight lifeline—for the next great boom in the state’s astonishing development. Thanks to these improvements, and Flagler’s early investments in land, agriculture, banking, and utilities, Florida would grow from being arguably the poorest state in the union to having the country’s third largest population and fourth largest economy today. 

“These tactics—excavating mangrove swamps or other types of swamps and saltwater marshes; building new barrier islands; erecting bulkheads and seawalls; and dredging in ways that removed natural breakwaters or barriers to storms and altered shorelines or changed current flows—were the beginnings of a new pattern of coastline development in the country. This pattern would one day lead to disasters such as the flooding of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and other disasters in Florida”

“Perhaps the greatest contribution to the boom by Florida’s politicians was the change made to Florida’s constitution in 1924 that abolished the state’s income tax and inheritance tax. Florida was the first state in the nation to do so. The move was designed to tempt wealthy residents of other states to move their domiciles to Florida. It worked: Florida went from being an attractive vacation venue to an alluring tax haven overnight.”

“From one viewpoint, the Florida land boom is a familiar story of middle-aged men, behaving badly—financially, maritally, and, all too often, morally—in a manner that seems especially unsurprising today. Each of Florida’s real estate barons let his ego be warped by the adulation of the crowd, by his susceptibility to greed and ambition.”

“During the twenties, the state of Florida, as well as the nation as a whole, saw remarkable social, economic, and environmental changes. Florida went from being the last American frontier (until Alaska, which became a state in 1959) and began the rapid transformation from a predominantly agricultural state to a largely urban state driven by a service-based economy. By 1940, fully 55 percent of Floridians lived in cities and towns.”