Florida existed long before Walt Disney World.
Believe it or not, tourism in Florida existed before Mickey set up shop in the formerly quiet wetlands of Orlando, too.
In fact, you don’t need to drive far from the entertainment epicenter of Orange County to find yourself in real Florida – a land of wildlife, mangroves, wetlands, wildflowers, beaches, and natural, spring-fed lakes. Even today, as Harry Potter and Star Wars battle it out behind the gated walls of corporate playgrounds, other worlds exists just a daytrip away: worlds of alligators, dinosaurs, tikis, flamingos, parrots… and mermaids.
Before strip malls and outlets dotted the landscape, roadside attractions dating back to mid-century Americana littered the Floridian landscape, and while quite a few survive today, there may be none as fantastic as Weeki Wachee Springs, where mermaids are real.
How did this unusual roadside attraction appear? What’s hidden away in the glassy waters of the Weeki Wachee River? Today, we’ll dive into the unusual tail of a roadside attraction that managed to survive in a Wizarding World market.
In this case, the story begins just after one of the darkest times in human history.
Americana
When servicemen returned from World War II, they found a country quite unlike the one they had left behind. The G.I. Bill provided benefits in housing and education that allowed servicemen to reestablish themselves in a new world where women ruled the workforce and had no intention of returning to domestic duties, fueling a new kind of economy. In this brave new world, households with two working parents created a new economic baseline, and a new cultural one, too.
It’s here in this unusual, changing society that many historians note the meteoric rise of the middle class; a new kind of American family with money to spare and a new benefit – leisure time – that would change American life as it was known. You can see how the pieces were in place, and with the automobile already integral in American culture, the 1940s saw the rise of an unprecedented cultural invention: the “family vacation.”
Just as the rise of the railroad had fueled the development of late-1800s picnic parks like Cedar Point, the widespread use of the automobile, the new concept of leisure time, and the peak of the middle class in the mid-century created the perfect canvas on which Walt Disney would build his masterpiece. The timing couldn’t have been better. Disneyland opened in 1955. Mom and dad pulled out the atlas, put an X over Anaheim, the family set off on a road trip.
That’s why businessmen across the country saw a new opportunity.
Along America’s newly established highways and byways, restaurants, hotels, motels, and what we’d now call “tourist traps” sprung up along the United States’ interior. Some of the most legendary are so-called “curiosities” (in the form of novelty architecture or pre-social-media viral marketing, like Santa Cruz, California’s “Mystery Spot”) offering gotta-see-it appeal and souvenir stands packed with postcards.
Luckily for Florida, it’s already got a natural wonder worth pulling the car over.
Florida Springs
You haven’t seen water until you’ve seen Floridian spring water.
Fed via underwater aquifers, Florida’s springs are truly the unsung wonders of the natural world. If you thought the manmade waterway carved through Disney Springs was an exaggeration, you’re wrong. As clear and still as glass, these spectacular natural lagoons don’t just act as icy windows into the vibrant cerulean underwater world, they also provide 90% of the state’s drinking water… It’s easy to see why untouched Floridian wilderness becomes an almost-alien world in Jeff VanderMeer’s 2014 novel Annihilation, as these springs also support entire ecosystems of plants and animals found no where else…
And more to our point today, for nearly a century they’ve supported tourism all their own – kayaking, diving, bird watching, swimming, hiking, and fishing. In the eyes of mid-century America, there was great money to be made in the natural wonders of Florida’s pristine wilderness… And in 1946 – eight years before ground would even be broken Disneyland – a former U.S. Navy man named Newton Perry saw a spectacular opportunity in one particular spring.
Weeki Wachee
Newton Perry stumbled upon Weeki Wachee… a spring named by the Seminole Indians whose name means “little spring.”
Despite its unassuming name, the truth is that Weeki Wachee Springs itself is so deep that the bottom has never been found. Each day, 117 million gallons of water – a perfect 74-degrees Fahrenheit – flow from the spring and fill a 100-foot wide limestone basin. That basin – continuously refreshed from the bottomless spring below – feeds the Weeki Wachee River that winds 12 miles westward before emptying into the Gulf of Mexico.
Newton and his first “mermaids.” Image: Weeki Wachee Springs State Park
After pulling decades of old, abandoned cars and rusted refrigerators out of the spring, Perry began toying with a new kind of invention. Rather than relying on oxygen tanks strapped to swimmers backs, he embedded long hoses into the spring, connected to air compressors on the surface. This, he found, would allow it to appear that humans could remain underwater for long periods, thriving twenty feet below the surface by breathing from the air hoses at will.
Image: Weeki Wachee Springs State Park
Quickly, he had constructed an 18-seat theater built six feet below the water’s surface into the limestone basin, with a glass window looking out on “the Grand Canyon of the Sea.” But he needed swimmers to perform the underwater ballet he had in mind… and you won’t believe who he found. Read on…
Imagine it… October 13, 1947. With your family packed into the Studebaker, you’re en route to the Gulf of Mexico for a Florida vacation. Along the two-lane highway of US-19, a new sign catches your eye: WEEKI WACHEE.
Image: Weeki Wachee Springs State Park
Cars aren’t exactly common along this section of freeway, and the sound of your engine has drawn sirens from the deep. In the attraction’s early years, a cavalcade of swimsuit-clad girls would run out from inside to wave along the roadside. Like the sirens of legend, their goal was to entice sailors (in this case, probably the dad behind the wheel) to pull over. More often than not, it must’ve worked.
The girls of Weeki Wachee began as what you might call “tailless mermaids.” Newt Perry had recruited these beauties and trained them to swim with air hoses, smiling at the same time. They learned out to drink a non-carbonated beverage called Grapette and eat bananas underwater. But most strikingly of all, the girls of Weeki Wachee became the pioneers of aquatic ballet… an art more difficult than you might expect, as evidenced in the video here:
Imagine synchronized free diving in the pressure of the bottom of a pool, fighting the continuous current of the spring’s continuously refilling basin and gracefully batting away turtles and watching for venomous water moccasins, with eyes open, while smiling and you might have some idea of the persistance these aquatic athletes had.
There’s no question that the mermaids of Weeki Wachee were – above all else – skillfully trained, spectacularly strong athletes, and throughout the 1940s and ‘50s, Weeki Wachee became one of the best-known and most well-attended tourist stops in the state of Florida.
Image: Weeki Wachee Springs State Park
And like today’s NBA stars, their popularity was about to skyrocket. With one big change, the mermaids wouldn’t need to stand at the roadside anymore.
ABC
Image: Weeki Wachee Springs State Park
From its start in 1947, performances at Weeki Wachee were what you’d expect of a kitschy roadside attraction, simply infused with the surprisingly sincere efforts of some tremendously powerful athletes doing something no one had imagined before. And in 1959, the entire attraction was given a boost. Weeki Wachee Springs was purchased by the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) – the very entertainment company who helped to sponsor Walt’s Disneyland just four years earlier, and whom Eisner’s Walt Disney Company would later buy outright.
ABC saw that the tranquil Florida enclave was good for more than simply a pull-off from a two-land road. The old, 18-seat theater sunk 6-feet below the water’s surface wasn’t quite large enough for what ABC had in store. It was razed in favor of a 400-seat underwater auditorium set 16-feet into the water, providing unparalleled views of a stage formed by nature – a wonder in its own right.
In true cinematic style, ABC upped the ante by presenting underwater shows like “The Mermaids and the Pirates” and “Underwater Circus,” rotating with watery renditions of “Alice in Wonderland,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “Peter Pan,” and “Snow White.”
Mermaids would now appear in the spring “magically” by pushing themselves through a water-filled, narrow, concrete tunnel that drops sixteen feet below the water’s surface, then runs 64 feet horizontally to the center of the stage. Naturally, ABC’s entertainment wizardry brought along elaborate underwater props, costume changes, synchronized music and audio, and even lifts…!
Image: Weeki Wachee Springs State Park
Suddenly, the swimmers of Weeki Wachee were celebrities. At its peak under ABC, the attraction had 35 mermaids on its payroll, many of whom lived in “mermaid cottages” along the spring. Still, applications flooded in from as far away as Tokyo as women dreamed of becoming one of the underwater beauties that had captivated the nation.
Elvis Presley, Don Knotts, and Olympian swimmer Esther Williams are among the big names of the era known to have visited the park, and ABC used it as a backdrop for Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid and a number of one-off television specials, like this one:
Changing Times
Weeki Wachee’s heyday under ABC couldn’t last forever.
As the ‘60s and ‘70s progressed, the decades-old roadside attraction began to fall out of favor. It’s really no different from our in-depth look at Disneyland’s Lost Legend: The Peoplemover and Walt’s Tomorrowland. The styles of mid-century Americana inherent in that New Tomorrowland (and in Weeki Wachee) were quickly identifiable to audiences as remnants from a different time… holdovers of an outdated style of architecture and entertainment, respectively.
Image: Weeki Wachee Springs State Park
And even as the tiny town of Weeki Wachee incorporated itself in 1966, finally securing a spot on nearby road signs, a much bigger, newer roadside attraction was coming… one that would be 40 square miles, and dub itself “the Vacation Kingdom of the World,” poised to crush such original Floridian gems… Read on…
It won’t come as much of a surprise that the opening of Walt Disney World in 1971 appeared to be the final nail in the coffin of Florida’s roadside attractions. It wasn’t just that the Orlando-area resort was its own kind of “walled garden” with its own eco-tourism, kayaking, boating, camping, and more… it was that Walt Disney World was merely a symptom of the changing times.
Just as Disneyland had been fueled by the rise of the automobile and its crowning achievement, the family vacation, this new Walt Disney World would be fueled not by cars, but by airplanes. Inexpensive commercial flight had changed the tourism game upon its arrival in the era, which is why one of Magic Kingdom’s original attraction gems was the Lost Legend: If You Had Wings. At the time, an exploration into aviation actually fit in Tomorrowland, as the possibilities of air travel were poised to change the future!
There was just one problem… Planes arriving in Orlando skimmed right over tiny towns like Weeki Wachee and the roadside attractions they offered. So while tourist attractions lucky enough to have been established close to Orlando – like another Roadside Wonder: Gatorland – actually grew in attendance after Disney World’s opening, the ’70s and ’80s weren’t so kind to other attractions throughout the state.
Click and expand for a larger and more detailed view. Image: Disney, via ImagiNERDing
It must’ve seemed that the mermaids of Weeki Wachee survived in spite of Walt Disney World, certainly not because of it. In 1982, Weeki Wachee added a pirate-themed Buccaneer Bay water park to draw tourists, but it seemed that time was running short for the forty-year-old attraction.
…Until a mermaid exploded in theaters, providing a cultural boost. And it may not be the mermaid you’re thinking of.
The Little Mermaid(s)
In the 1980s, things were changing quickly at Walt Disney Productions thanks to new CEO Michael Eisner, who set out to revitalize the company’s tarnished, tired image after a decade of dustiness after Walt’s death.
One of his first decrees was that Disney needed to transform its filmmaking to appeal to wider audiences. In 1984, he established the Touchstone Pictures label to release films that didn’t fit with Disney’s cartoon image.
Image: Disney
One of the first was Ron Howard’s Splash, a fantastical romantic comedy about a mermaid (played by Daryl Hannah) who falls for a businessman she rescued (Tom Hanks) and must choose between life on land and in the sea while avoiding a scheming scientist determined to expose her for what she really is.
As Eisner had hoped, Splash served to revitalize Walt Disney Productions (and, by the way, literally created the name Madison), but it also set the stage for Disney’s next coup. Just as a mermaid had given Walt Disney Studios new legs, so too would a mermaid provide for the rebirth of Disney’s animation.
Image: Disney
Hans Christian Andersen’s nautical fable about a mermaid who longs for love in the world above had already been adapted many times over at Weeki Wachee and elsewhere, but Disney’s 1989 film The Little Mermaid had the kind of cultural impact not since in decades.
Across the planet, boys and girls began to dream of being mer-people, gliding along the bubbling clear currents of an underwater world. It’s unquestionable that the resurgence of the mermaid via Splash and The Little Mermaid must’ve provided the boon Weeki Wachee needed in the ‘90s, returning it to Floridian prominence, albeit now as a day trip from Walt Disney World akin to the Kennedy Space Center, Cypress Gardens, or Gatorland.
Image: Weeki Wachee Springs State Park
Perhaps that was the reboot the park needed. It’s no surprise that at about this time, the mermaids of Weeki Wachee began to take their titles a little more literally, never seen without sporting their tails, in or out of the water. It’s also at about this time – in 1997 – that Weeki Wachee began hosting Mermaids of Yesteryear shows, inviting back former aquatic performers who – by that time – might watched their own daughters or granddaughters take on a tail of their own.
There’s something magical and unforgettable about seeing the mermaids of Weeki Wachee and how they make something so difficult appear so simple, and with so much grace and ease.
Weeki Wachee Springs State Park
In 2008, the park was absorbed into the Florida State Park system as Weeki Wachee Springs State Park. At over 500 acres (about the total size of Disney’s Animal Kingdom), this one-of-a-kind state park has elevated its mermaids from roadside attraction to genuine Florida attraction. Generations of locals and tourists have explored this natural wonder, and that continues to this day.
Though the unique shows continue in the Mermaid Theater, there’s even more to see and do.
Image: Weeki Wachee Spring State Park
Buccaneer Bay remains the only spring-fed waterpark in the state, with crystal waters clear enough to see through like ice. Twenty five minute River Boat Cruises explore the real Floridian wilderness along the Weeki Wachee River, sometimes sailing alongside kayakers, canoers, and manatees that travel to and from the bubbling spring. Naturally, the park also offers animal shows and encounters, hiking trails, snorkling, and more.
And for all of those children inspired by Madison, Ariel, and Triton, multi-day mermaid camps for children ages 7 – 14… and another for adults, too.
Mermaids Are Real
Image: Weeki Wachee Springs State Park
Just as a simplistic, mid-century optimism fueled the design and feel of Walt’s Space-Age-set New Tomorrowland, the genuine whimsy of Weeki Wachee must’ve looked and felt like the remnants of a bygone era throughout the ’70s and ’80s. Perhaps the arrivals of Splash and The Little Mermaid helped bolster the park in the ’90s. But the real, true key to the park’s survival? Time.
By surviving the end of the 20th century and the arrival of the behemoth Walt Disney World, Weeki Wachee made it to a new day. And today, the very core of this attraction – the elements that made it so out-of-place in the ’80s and ’90s – is now its strength. It’s persevered long enough to go from outdated tourist trap of yesteryear to a living piece of nostalgia, locked into the Florida story and underscored by a retro-coolness. Its simplicity, optimism, and ease elevate it beyond its roadside origins. It’s a genuine Florida gem.
Image: Weeki Wachee Springs State Park
Weeki Wachee Springs is a wonder.
And if it has proven anything while weathering the ebbs and flows of pop culture over the last seventy years, it’s that it’s timeless.
Now, we want to hear from you. Use the comments below to share your memories. Have you ever visited this hidden Florida oasis? What do you remember about this “city of mermaids?” Will you continue the tradition and share this enchanted Florida family attraction with your children?
