Tracing Florida Journeys: Explorers, travelers, and landscapes then and now
Press release from Matheson History Museum
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Join us at 4 p.m. on Saturday, April 6, as Dr. Leslie Kemp Poole shares from her latest book Tracing Florida Journeys (University Press of Florida). How has Florida’s land changed across five centuries? What has stayed the same, and what remains only in memory? In Tracing Florida Journeys, Poole delves into the stories of well-known explorers and travelers who came to the peninsula and wrote about their experiences, looking at their words and the paths they took from the perspective of today.
In these pages, John Muir and Harriet Beecher Stowe write about their visits to Florida, reflecting their expectations of a place that was touted to be “paradise.” John James Audubon finds riches of bird life in the Keys. Zora Neale Hurston travels to turpentine camps and sawmills documenting the stories and music of workers and residents. Jonathan Dickinson and Stephen Crane recount shipwrecks along a sparsely populated coastline. Members of Hernando de Soto’s violent 1539 expedition of conquest describe their struggles with dense swamps, forests, rivers, and resistance from the native people they exploited.
Highlighting the Florida that was and the Florida that exists now, Poole brings together historical research, interviews with experts, and her personal experiences to tell a revealing story of the state’s natural history.
In-person registration: https://mathesonmuseum.networkforgood.com/events/67864-tracing- florida-journeys
Zoom registration:
https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_aP9t_c1hQ3WDnqs963tdWQ
Leslie Kemp Poole, Ph.D.
Dr. Leslie Kemp Poole is associate professor of environmental studies at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. A fourth-generation Floridian, Poole’s specialty is the environmental history of the state. She is the author of Saving Florida: Women’s Fight for the Environment in the Twentieth Century and Co-Editor of The Wilder Heart of Florida, a collection of essays about nature in the state. An award-winning journalist and historian, she has appeared in three PBS documentaries and regularly speaks to groups about Florida’s beauty and environmental issues.
This event is sponsored in part by Visit Gainesville/Alachua County, FL; The City of Gainesville; and by the Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Council of the Arts and Culture, and the State of Florida.