Florida

People have lived in Florida for at least 14,000 years. At European contact the Calusa ruled the south-west coast from shell mounds and canals, the Timucua held the north-east, the Apalachee the Panhandle and the Tequesta the Miami area. Juan Ponce de León named the land La Florida in 1513, and in 1565 Pedro Menéndez de Avilés founded St. Augustine, the oldest continuously inhabited city of European origin in the contiguous United States. Spanish Florida became a refuge for people escaping slavery in the British colonies, and Fort Mose, founded in 1738 near St. Augustine, was a free Black settlement.

Florida passed to Britain in 1763, back to Spain in 1783 and to the United States in 1821. Three Seminole Wars followed as the US army tried to force the Seminole west; a few hundred held out in the Everglades, and their descendants form today's Seminole and Miccosukee tribes. Florida became a state in 1845 and joined the Confederacy. After the war, cotton and citrus grew in the north and centre, and in the 1880s–1910s Henry Flagler's railway pushed down the Atlantic coast to Miami and, by 1912, Key West, while Henry Plant developed Tampa, where Cuban and Spanish workers rolled cigars in Ybor City.

A land boom in the 1920s collapsed after the 1926 hurricane. Air conditioning, mosquito control and post-war migration then transformed the state. Rockets began flying from Cape Canaveral in the 1950s, Apollo 11 left for the Moon from the Kennedy Space Center in 1969, and Walt Disney World opened in 1971. After the Cuban Revolution of 1959, hundreds of thousands of exiles made Miami a Latin American metropolis.

Florida is several cultures stacked on one peninsula. The north and the Panhandle are Southern in speech, faith and food, while south Florida faces the Caribbean and Latin America: in Miami-Dade County most residents speak Spanish at home, Cuban exiles and their descendants shaped its politics and business, and Venezuelan, Colombian, Nicaraguan, Haitian and Puerto Rican communities have followed. Little Havana, Little Haiti and the Puerto Rican neighbourhoods around Orlando each keep their own music and food.

Retirees and winter visitors from the Northeast and Midwest, known as snowbirds, have long set the tone of the Gulf Coast and the south-east counties, and south Florida has one of the country's largest Jewish communities. The Seminole Tribe of Florida is a major business owner, including the Hard Rock brand.

The calendar mixes the Calle Ocho street festival in Miami, Art Basel Miami Beach each December, Tampa's Gasparilla pirate parade in January, the Daytona 500 motor race in February and spring break on the beaches. Watching rocket launches from the Space Coast has become a regular pastime. Life is informal and outdoor — boating, fishing and the beach — and casual dress is normal almost everywhere.

About 23 million people live in Florida. Jacksonville is the most populous city, with nearly a million residents, because its boundaries take in most of its county; the Miami metropolitan area is by far the largest urban area, with over six million people spread along the south-east coast from Miami through Fort Lauderdale to West Palm Beach. Tampa, Orlando, St. Petersburg and the state capital, Tallahassee, are the other main cities.

Tourism is the largest industry, and Orlando is one of the most visited places in the country. Around it sit aerospace on the Space Coast, trade and finance in Miami, which works as a business capital for Latin America, and agriculture — sugar cane south of Lake Okeechobee, vegetables, cattle and oranges, although disease and storms have shrunk the citrus harvest. Florida has no state income tax, which helps draw newcomers and retirees.

The rapid growth brings pressure: traffic, heavy development of wetlands and coast, soaring home-insurance costs after repeated hurricanes, and high-tide flooding in low-lying Miami Beach and the Keys as sea levels rise.

South Florida eats Cuban. The Cuban sandwich layers roast pork, ham, Swiss cheese, pickles and mustard in pressed Cuban bread, with Tampa adding salami; cafecito is a tiny, very sweet espresso shot, taken at walk-up windows with croquetas (fried croquettes) and pastelitos (flaky pastries filled with guava or meat). Ropa vieja, shredded beef stewed in tomato, and black beans with rice fill lunch plates, and Haitian griot, fried pork, is found in Little Haiti.

Seafood is everywhere. Stone crab claws, served cold with mustard sauce, are a Miami Beach institution in season from October to May; the Keys serve conch fritters and fresh mahi-mahi; the Gulf Coast is known for grouper sandwiches and smoked fish dip; and the Panhandle for Gulf shrimp and oysters. St. Augustine's Minorcan clam chowder is spiced with the local datil pepper.

Key lime pie — the tart juice of small Key limes set with sweetened condensed milk in a crumb crust — is the official state pie. Orange juice is the state beverage, and the north shares the Southern habits of boiled peanuts, grits and sweet tea, while fried alligator tail appears on menus near the swamps.

Miami combines South Beach and the Art Deco hotels of Ocean Drive, Little Havana and Calle Ocho, the murals of Wynwood and the Italianate Vizcaya estate on Biscayne Bay. South and west lies Everglades National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with the Anhinga Trail and the observation tower at Shark Valley, beside Big Cypress National Preserve.

The Overseas Highway strings together the Florida Keys: John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park at Key Largo, the fishing town of Islamorada, the Seven Mile Bridge near Marathon and, at the end, Key West, with the Hemingway Home, Duval Street and sunset at Mallory Square. Dry Tortugas National Park, with the brick Fort Jefferson, lies further west by boat or seaplane.

Central Florida is theme-park country: Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom and EPCOT, Universal Orlando and SeaWorld, with the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex an hour east on the Space Coast. On the Gulf side, Tampa has Ybor City, St. Petersburg the Dalí Museum, and the coast runs from Clearwater Beach to Siesta Key and the shell beaches of Sanibel Island; manatees gather in winter at Crystal River. Freshwater springs dot the interior, and the Panhandle has white-sand beaches at Destin and Pensacola.

In the north-east, St. Augustine keeps its Spanish plan, the Castillo de San Marcos, narrow St. George Street and Henry Flagler's former Ponce de León Hotel, now Flagler College, with the site of Fort Mose nearby.