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301 this book is the result of years of research and writing that began with a short piece, “Seasided,” that was published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, October 9, 1994, and culminated with an essay in the spring 2010 issue of Southern Cultures. Titled “The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera: The Northern Rim of the Gulf Coast since World War II,” the Southern Cultures piece covered the Mississippi coast and Dauphin Island, which are not included here. Though the Mississippi coast is equal in redneckery to any place on the Gulf, it contains economic, cultural, and demographic elements that set it apart from its neighbors to the east. So it was decided to save that area for another day—and likely another historian. The same factors led to the decision to leave Alabama’s Dauphin Island out as well. I would like to thank Jacksonville State University and its Eminent Scholar program for support in the research and writing. Rather than providing formal citation notes, I have chosen to identify the principal sources used in this study in the form of the essay you are reading. The chapter-by-chapter breakdown that follows this essay should enable readers to tie specific sources to the story being told. The difficulty of documenting this book in a more traditional way comes from the fact that so much of it is based on my own experiences. In 1954 my grandmother bought property in Seagrove Beach, Florida, midway between Panama City and Destin. Two years later she built a “cottage” there. For over half a century that has been my home away from home. My account of my family’s early days there, “Florida Room: From ‘Redneck Riviera’ to ‘Emerald Coast’: A Personal History of a Piece of the Florida Panhandle,” was published in the Florida Historical Quarterly 81 (Winter 2003): 316–22. Essay on Sources 302 essay on sources At roughly the same time I also published “Developing the Panhandle: Seagrove Beach, Seaside, Watercolor, and the Florida Tourist Tradition,” in SouthernJourneys: Tourism,History,andCultureintheModernSouth,ed.RichardD.Starnes(Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003). That essay was an expansion and elaboration of an earlier piece, “Seaside, Florida: Robert Davis and the Quest for Community,” which was published in Atlanta History in the fall of 1998. Although I had this close connection to the Florida Panhandle, the mere fact that I grew up in south Alabama, around one hundred miles north of Mobile, made Gulf Shores and Orange Beach close and convenient for my friends and me. So it was that through high school and college I traveled there frequently and developed a fondness for those communities and those people that continues to this day. If you have never tossed a mullet at the Flora-Bama, well, you should. Over the years I have published pieces on coastal doings in the Atlanta JournalConstitution , the Birmingham News, the Mobile Press-Register, and the Anniston Star, where I am a weekly columnist. Writing these has kept me abreast of what was going on down there and allowed me to discuss the evolution of the region with people whose thoughts and observations are incorporated into this essay and detailed in the book. Some of the richest resources for the study of the Gulf Coast are local newspapers , many of which, happily, are now found online. Though most are shameless boosters of their economies, they also reflect the thoughts and, in some cases, the memories of people who made their communities what they were and are. In particular the Destin Log created the Destin History Project in connection with its 2008 and 2009 Progress Editions. These are on its website and are valuable to any researcher. Add to these a host of local studies by local people and you have a core of commentary from which to work. Among these are Patricia H. Bonkemeyer, ed., Once Upon an Island, as Told to and Collected by the Gulf Shores Woman’s Club (Foley, Ala.: Underwood Printing, 1955); From Cottages to Condos, compiled and written by the Gulf Shores Woman’s Club (Foley, Ala.: Underwood Printing, 1955); Margaret Childress Long and Michael D. Shipler, TheBestPlacetoBe:TheStoryofOrangeBeach, Alabama (Bay Minette, Ala.: Leedon Art, 2002); The Way We Were: Recollections of South Walton Pioneers (Santa Rosa Beach, Fla.: South Walton Three Arts Alliance, 1997); and Of Days Gone By: Reflections of South Walton County, Florida (Santa Rosa Beach, Fla.: South Walton Three Arts Alliance, 1999). Images of the early...

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