"Tracing Florida Journey's, Explorers, Travelers, and Landscapes"

Leslie Kemp Poole

How has Florida's land changed across fie centuries? What has stayed the same, and what remains only in memory? In Tracing Florida Journeys, Leslie Poole delves into the stories of the 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.

Using journals and articles that date back to the early European exploration of the region, Poole retraces the steps of their authors. The land these writers describe is often hard to imagine in today's Florida, a top destination for tourists filled with almost 22 million residents. These stories show the evolving history of the state and the richness of its natural resources. Poole's comparisons also point to the people who have been displaced and the ecosystems that have been dramatically altered by the exploration and development.

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.

Leslie Kemp Poole, a fourth-generation Floridian, is associate professor of environmental studies at Rollins College. She is the author of "Saving Florida: Women's Fight for the Environment in the Twentieth Century" and coeditor of "The Wilder Heart of Florida: More Writers Inspired by Florida Nature".