On a map of the continental United States Florida is easily recognized as the southward jutting peninsula separating the Atlantic Ocean from the Gulf of Mexico. Florida is the exposed portion of the Floridan Plateau, a mass of rock nearly 500 miles long and from 250 to 400 miles wide. On top of a foundation of mostly igneous rock, assumed to be a continuation of the geologic base of the Piedmont region of Georgia, are more than 4,000 feet of highly porous sedimentary rock, chiefly limestone, formed over millennia by deposition of shells and bones of sea creatures as well as chemicals evaporated from the shallow seawater.
    Over the millions of years of the Florida peninsula's geologic history, its size and shape have changed many times: 50 million years ago it was an island south of North America, 10 million years ago it was completely submerged, and since then peninsulas and islands of various sizes and shapes have been created and redrawn by fluctuating sea levels. Florida's abundance of ridges, sinkholes, springs, rivers, lakes, and plains is the result of these rises and falls of the sea and of the uplift and subsidence of land. The sea is also largely responsible for the state's many bays, inlets, wetlands, and islands. The Florida Keys, a gentle arc of islands extending 150 miles south of the peninsula to Key West, are composed of coral rock covered in most places with a thin layer of sand.
    Florida's location between latitudes 24 degrees 30' N and 31 degrees N, the warming influence of the Gulf Stream, and its geologic history result in a climate and an array of plants and animals unlike any other state. The climate of Florida is basically humid subtropical with the exception of the southern tip of the peninsula and the Keys, which are tropical. Long, hot summers are separated from short, cool, and sometimes cold, winters by mild and pleasant days during spring and fall. The Gulf Stream moderates Florida's temperatures year-round. Sea breezes keep land along the coast slightly warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer than inland areas. Climatic differences are smallest in the summer when the state is almost continually under the influence of warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic. During July, the warmest month, temperature differences are small throughout Florida: mean daily maximum values range from 88 to 91 degrees Farenheit, and mean minimum values range from 72 to 75 degrees Farenheit. In the winter temperature differences are far greater across the state: mean daily maximum temperatures during January, the coldest month, range from 75 degrees Farenheit in southern Florida to 60 degrees Farenheit in the western panhandle, and mean daily minimum temperatures range from 60 degrees Farenheit in the south to 40 degrees Farenheit in the north.
    With the exception of the north, where rain accompanies winter cold fronts, most of Florida receives the majority of its rain from summer showers and storms, a predictable and welcome afternoon relief from the heat and humidity. The Florida peninsula has been dubbed the "thunderstorm capital" of the northern hemisphere. Only in the heart of sub-Saharan Africa are thunderstorms more frequent than over the Florida peninsula.
    Florida averages 54 inches of rainfall annually, more than any other state. Despite its high rainfall Florida has relatively few days when the sun fails to shine at least part of the day. So rare are these days that a St. Petersburg newspaper used to give away its evening edition on sunless days.
Great amounts of rain may fall within short periods of time: 38.7 inches in 24 hours in Yankeetown in 1950, 6 inches in 1 hour in Hialeah (near Miami) in 1947. The heaviest rainfall occurs in a strip 10 to 15 miles inland from the southeast coast and in the western panhandle, which averages 66 inches of rain each year. The Keys normally receive the smallest amount of rainfall-an average of 40 inches each year. Miami Beach averages 47 inches each year, and Miami, only 9 miles inland averages 58 inches. Rain may appear suddenly from a cloudless sky and may fall in one block and not another.
    Although rainfall is abundant in Florida, it varies seasonally and annually as well as spatially, sometimes resulting in severe supply problems, particularly in south Florida. Geologist Garald Parker identified a line snaking across the peninsula from New Smyrna Beach to Cedar Key as the Florida Hydrologic Divide. The area south of this line, which supports over three-quarters of the state's population, is totally dependent on rainfall it receives for its water: virtually no net movement of either surface water or groundwater occurs across this line.
    All of Florida is susceptible to hurricanes-tropical storms with wind in excess of 74 miles per hour-from June through November, with the greatest number occurring in September and October. Dade County and the Keys have the highest probability of experiencing a hurricane: 1 in 7 in any given year. Thousands of lives, however, were lost to hurricanes earlier in the century. Over 120 people were killed and 5,000 homes destroyed when a hurricane hit Miami in 1926. Two years later over 2,000 people-mostly migrant farm workers-drowned when a dike around Lake Okeechobee broke during a hurricane, an event vividly recounted in frightening detail by Zora Neale Hurston in her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. The Labor Day hurricane of 1935 killed over 400 in the Keys. Many were unemployed World War I veterans sent to work on public road projects. They were killed when the train sent from Miami to evacuate them was swept off the track by wind and water.
    Even today after decades of intense development and thousands of years of human occupancy, Florida is still a biological wonderland and global hotspot of biodiversity, with a mixture of species derived from more temperate areas to the north and tropical Caribbean areas to the south. Travelling across north Florida and along the St. Johns River in 1777, naturalist William Bartram described large-mouth bass weighing 25 to 30 pounds, diamondback rattlesnakes 10 to 12 feet long, and live oaks with circumferences of 12 to 18 feet. He also identified 400 species of plants, 125 of which were previously unknown to him.
    Contemporary biologists estimate that there are 300 species of native trees and 3,500 species of vascular plants in Florida. Today the predominant vegetative community throughout Florida is pine forests. One to three species of pine (longleaf, slash, pond) are found mixed with oak. Herbs, saw palmetto, shrubs, and small hardwood trees form an understory. A century ago, before large-scale drainage and development, as much as 60 percent of Florida's surface was wetlands. Now they occupy 15 to 20 percent. Today mangroves, swamps, and saltwater marshes are still found on the southern rim of the peninsula. Freshwater marshes abound in the Everglades, called Pa-hay-okee-the "grassy water"-by the Indians and "River of Grass" by famous Florida author and environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas. North and west of Lake Okeechobee are wet grasslands. In central Florida, pine flatwoods are interspersed with mixed forests of pine, xerophytic oak, and hardwoods. In the northern panhandle are forests of mixed hardwoods and pines. Where trees have been cut for lumber or pulp, secondary growth consists mostly of pines. Throughout the state, river valleys and large lakes are bounded by cypress forests. Most of the coastline is sandy beaches, saltwater marshes, or mangrove swamps. 
    Much of the vegetation in the panhandle and the northern part of the state is shared with the rest of the Gulf and the Atlantic coastal plains. Specialized assemblages of plants developed in the central portion of the state when the area was isolated by higher seas. Tropical and subtropical plants, many of Caribbean and South American origin, thrive in the hammocks of south Florida. Florida has over 150 native species of reptiles and amphibians, including the now-abundant alligator and the much rarer American crocodile, as well as over 200 native species of freshwater fish. Over 425 species of birds-approximately half the bird species in the U.S.-may be observed in Florida. The only coral reefs off the continental United States are in the clear waters off the Florida Keys. Here more than 200 species of fish and 50 species of coral are found.
    Humans have been drawn to this abundant and diverse natural environment for thousands of years. The first of Florida's many million residents were Indians who migrated into the peninsula more than 12,000 years ago when the land mass was larger and the climate drier than it is today. Mastodons, camels, mammoths, saber-toothed cats, giant sloths, bisons, and horses roamed vast grasslands. Florida's early inhabitants were nomadic, hunting big game and traveling in small family groups in response to availability of food and water.
    On April 3, 1513, searching for an island the Carib Indians called Bimini-reputed to be a paradise of pearls, silver, gold, and a fountain of youth-Juan Ponce de Le—n landed at an unknown spot along the upper east coast of Florida. He named the land La Florida because it was Pascua Florida (the Easter season, literally translated as Feast of Flowers) and because from the sea the land appeared laden with flowers and trees. Ponce claimed every contiguous parcel of land for the Spanish crown, having no idea he was staking claim to virtually all of North America. Ponce de Le—n was the first of a long series of European adventurers, explorers, and missionaries seeking gold and other precious metals, sites for settlements, and converts in La Florida.
    At least 100,000 Indians-perhaps several times more-were living in Florida in the early 1500s. The Apalachee and Timucuan Indians in the north shared many cultural traits with other Indians of what was to become the southeastern U.S., including agriculture, chief-centered political organization, temple mounds, and elaborate burial rituals. The Calusa and other Indians in the southern peninsula ate large quantities of readily available fish and shellfish, and produced huge shell middens, elaborate earthworks, and delicately carved wooden figurines.
    The Spanish admiral Pedro Menendez de Aviles established the first permanent European settlement in Florida in 1565 and named it St. Augustine. Today St. Augustine is popular with tourists as the oldest continuously occupied settlement founded by Europeans in the United States. For nearly three centuries, Florida was a pawn in the European competition for the New World and fell under control of Spain (twice) and Britain before becoming a territory of the U.S. in 1821.
By the early 1700s all but a handful of the descendants of Florida's original Indian population had been eradicated by disease and war. Creeks and other southeastern Indians, displaced from their native lands by advancing colonists, began to move into the now nearly vacant land, establishing towns, raising cattle, and growing crops. In the 1800s as Florida became more and more attractive to the expanding United States three wars were fought to remove these Indians, who had become known as the Seminoles. When the Third Seminole War ended in 1858, only 100-300 Seminoles remained in Florida.
    In 1830, when first federal census to include Florida was taken, 37,730 persons were counted in the territory. The only settlements of consequence were St. Augustine to the east and Pensacola to the west, each with populations of about 2,000. Tallahassee's growth was just beginning. The site-previously the center of Apalachee Indian culture and later the location a Seminole Indian town-was selected in 1823 as the territorial capital because of its location halfway between Pensacola and St. Augustine. By 1845, when Florida became a state, Tallahassee had become the center of a flourishing cotton plantation region.
    Nearly all of Florida's population was in its northern tier, when in the 1850s the federal government gave two-thirds of Florida's land (24 million acres) to the state, declaring it "swamp and overflowed" and "unfit for civilization." The state sold at very low prices millions of acres to anyone promising to drain the land and to connect it by train to the North. By 1880, 60 percent of the entire state was owned by five railroad companies, one drainage enterprise, and one man-Hamilton Disston who bought 4 million acres for 25 cents per acre. In the 1880s Henry Flagler and Henry Plant built opulent hotels along the coasts of Florida linking them with their railroads to population centers in the North, attracting wealthy tourists to the state for the first time.
    By 1900 the state's population exceeded one-half million, and Jacksonville, which had developed as the gateway to the peninsula from a cow town surrounded by scattered farms, was the most populous city, with around 28,000 persons. Pensacola, a thriving lumber port, and Key West, the home of a federal naval base, had populations around 17,000, and Tampa, originally the site of Ft. Brooke established during the Second Seminole War, had a population of almost 16,000.
Settlement patterns changed in the twentieth century as people moved into the central and southern parts of the peninsula, especially along the slightly elevated Atlantic Coastal Ridge and along the Gulf coast, away from interior swamps and marshes. Development first occurred along the east coast, extending from Jacksonville south to Miami, then along the west coast from Tampa to St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Sarasota, and Ft. Myers. The space industry accelerated growth on the east coast, and Walt Disney World spurred growth in the central region. Today much of northern Florida is lightly populated. Much of the most heavily populated land in Florida is the least suitable environmentally for development. The largest amount of suitable land is in the still scarcely populated uplands of northern Florida.
    During the early twentieth century, masses of land speculators converged on the state. Miami's population swelled from slightly less than 30,000 to over 110,000 between 1910 and 1920. At the height of the boom, land on the Atlantic Coastal Ridge sold for $25,000 per acre and a foot of prime downtown commercial space was reputed to sell for $20,000. In 1925 alone 2.5 million people entered the state. A hurricane struck Miami in 1926, leveling tourist camps and tent cities, hastily constructed to house people during the boom. The Great Depression signaled the end of the first great land boom, but by 1930 Florida had become a predominantly urban state, with three-quarters of its population on 6 percent of its land. By 1950 the greatest boom in all of Florida history was underway and has continued unabated through the 1990s.
    In 1987 Florida overtook Pennsylvania as the fourth most-populous state in the nation with an estimated 12 million persons, up from twentieth place in 1950 and tenth place in 1964. By 1990 Florida's population had risen to nearly 13 million. Over 90 percent of Florida's population resides within its twenty metropolitan statistical areas. Many of Florida's counties still retain their rural character, although new communities, many aimed at retirees, with names like Beverly Hills, El Ranchero Village, and Jasmine Estates are continuously springing up, particularly in once-rural counties adjacent to urban complexes. In culture and character north Florida remains more like its neighboring counties in Georgia and Alabama than like south and central Florida.
    Florida's phenomenal growth since World War II has come from retirees and workers and their families from other states as well as from Cuban, Haitian, Vietnamese, and other refugees principally from the Caribbean and South and Central America. In 1980, almost 20 percent of Florida's residents had lived in another state during the preceding 5 years. Between 1978 and 1984, Florida gained nearly 200,000 residents a year, averaging nearly 4,000 each week, and over 500 each day: about 500,000 persons moved into the state each year, while 300,000 moved out of the state.
    In 1990, 86 percent of Florida's population was white and 14 percent was nonwhite. The percentages of whites and nonwhites vary considerably across the state, with the highest percentages of nonwhites in Dade County and in rural north Florida counties with a legacy of plantation agriculture.
    Florida's Hispanic population, comprised of people from many Latin American nations, has grown steadily since the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Between 1959 and 1966, 400,000 mainly middle-class Cubans settled in Miami. In 1980, 125,000 Cubans entered south Florida from the port of Mariel. Forced by Cuban authorities to depart were many of Cuba's mentally ill and criminals. In 1990, 12.2 percent of the state's population was Hispanic, an increase from 8.8 percent in 1980. Dade County was 49 percent Hispanic in 1990. The Miami metropolitan area contains the second largest concentration of Cubans in the world, behind only Havana. Over 50 percent of all Cubans in the U.S. now live in Miami.
    Florida also has a large percentage of the aged in its population. In 1990, 18 percent of all Floridians were 65 years of age or older and 1.6 percent was 85 years of age or older. In some counties (Charlotte, Highlands, Pasco, Sarasota, and Citrus) the percentage of those 65 and over approaches 40 percent. The greatest percentages of young adults (20 to 39 years of age) are found in Alachua and Leon counties, home of the two oldest state universities; Okaloosa and Santa Rosa counties, which have large military populations; and Union and Bradford counties, which have large male prison populations. The greatest percentages of children and adolescents are found in the rural counties of Baker, Hendry, Liberty, and Madison.
    The per capita personal income in Florida in 1989 was $15,049, sixteenth highest among the states. In 1982, 1 in every 255 persons in Florida was a millionaire. Palm Beach, Sarasota, and Broward counties have the highest per capita personal incomes in the state, while rural Glades, Union, and Dixie have the lowest. Striking contrasts, however, are often visible within the same county and marked differences exist from neighborhood to neighborhood within Florida's cities. Palm Beach with its palatial houses, luxurious hotels, galas, and polo clubs is 40 miles from the largely Haitian migrant farm worker town of Belle Glade, where per capita income is less than $9,000 per year, and the highest AIDS rate per capita in the nation is found. In metropolitan Miami upper-class neighborhoods where strict regulations on appearance of structures and grounds are rigorously enforced abut deteriorating, largely black neighborhoods.
    At the beginning of the twentieth century, the mainstays of Florida's economy were agriculture and forestry. By 1970 agriculture and forestry accounted for less than 4 percent of personal income in Florida, while tourism, services to retirees, and construction had become the dominant components of the Florida economy. 
    Central Florida's tourism industry took off with the opening of Walt Disney World in 1971. In the 1960s Walt Disney had quietly assembled the land for his empire for $5 million, an average of $180 per acre. When the news broke, land values near the site soared to $80,000 per acre. Today central Florida is the leading destination of Florida's tourists, surpassing the former leader, south Florida. 
Tourism remains a major industry, but in some ways has less relative significance today than it had in the recent past: in 1977 tourism directly accounted for about 13 percent of personal income in Florida; in 1987 it accounted for about 11 percent. In 1990, 41 million persons visited Florida. The winter draws the most visitors, except along panhandle beaches where summer is the tourist season.
    Florida agriculture is still nationally significant. The state ranks first among the fifty states in cash receipts for oranges, grapefruit, and sugarcane, and second in cash receipts for greenhouse and nursery products and tomatoes. Fewer farms are found in south Florida than in north Florida although south Florida farms are far larger and produce over three-quarters of the state's total agricultural products. All the top counties in terms of agricultural sales-Palm Beach, Polk, Hendry, Hillsborough, Dade, and Orange-with the exception of Hendry are experiencing urban population growth pressures.
    For decades Florida has been a mecca for hundreds of thousands of retirees seeking escape from the cold of northern winters and for young families seeking opportunities, particularly in the service, construction, and high-tech manufacturing industries. Thousands of refugees, particularly from Latin America, have also been drawn to Florida. Each year millions of tourists from around the world come to enjoy Florida's miles of sandy beaches and scores of commercial attractions.
Displayed in this atlas is a mass of information about Florida-about its natural environment, its history, its population, and its economics. So significant is tourism and recreation to Florida that a separate section is devoted to it. The atlas concludes with a section on infrastructure and planning-with the means by which Florida is attempting to deal with the impacts of rapid growth, and with the measures the state is taking to preserve at least some of the quality of life and natural environment that drew so many people to Florida in the first place.