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For generations, tourists have packed into trains, loaded up cars and filed onto planes with one destination - the sunshine state. As the first railways ventured into Florida, palatial hotels lured travelers south. Those hotels were the winter settings of the Gilded Age for a few decades, then barracks for members of the military during World War II, then rennovated, then forgotten and, at last revived. Their more humble neighbors, Florida's inns and motels, rose with adventurous budget travelers and the times, including the roadtrippers of the 1950s and 60s. Today, you can visit Florida and stay just about anywhere you like - rental homes on the beach, high-rises in Miami, house boats in the Keys. But many of Florida's original lodgings remain, and a few of them are even run by generations of the same family. And you don't have to be a tourist to visit them. Here you'll find a Spanish-Moorish palace that went from grand hotel to county courthouse to grand hotel again, the lodge on a spring where a 1950 sci-fi classic was filmed, the hotel where NASCAR was born, the motel where Martin Luther King Jr. honed his "I have a dream" speech, and the inn that served as a display case for its owner's eccentric antiques collection. Despite time and hurricanes and swanky house shares, Florida's historic hotels, motels and inns are still open, offering a bit of living history for a nightly rate.
About the author
Kristen Hare is a Florida-based journalist and author who started exploring Tampa Bay when her family made the move from St. Louis more than a decade ago. She never really stopped. Kristen has written three editions of 100 Things to do in Tampa Bay Before You Die. Kristen is a media reporter and faculty member at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, where her focuses are the local news industry and early career journalists. She's also a mom, a wife and, when not adventuring, a very happy homebody.
