Florida Gov. Kirk, a motorcycle gang and ... a tree nailing incident

Outlaws 1979
State Archives Florida/Thurston

By Jane Feehan 

It’s hard to believe driving through posh Juno Beach today that it was called home by some of the Outlaws motorcycle gang during the 1960s. 

Their hangout drew the personal attention of Florida Gov. Claude Kirk (1926-2011) who rose to the state’s highest office, in part, by claiming to be tough on crime. The flamboyant leader was also known for grabbing headlines for his antics, many unrelated to actual governing.

The Outlaws provided a good crime focus and photo op for the governor during November 1967. Gang members were arrested for allegedly nailing a 19-year-old woman to a tree in Juno. According to news accounts, she may have refused to turn a trick to hand over $10 to her “old man” or boyfriend. They nailed her (with her permission it was reported) to a tree branch with her toes barely touching the ground.

Afterward, news accounts say the cyclists dropped the woman off at a hospital and were thought to have stolen drugs. They were nabbed by police in a camp of trailers and cottages behind Kitty’s Saloon on U.S. Highway 1 in Juno.

The Florida Hotel and Restaurant Commission ordered the bar and camp closed calling it a public nuisance. Law enforcement then led a raid on the site to clean up ongoing gang activities. 

The owner of the saloon who also lived in the camp (and later was arrested on suspicion of running a prostitution ring), told reporters she was sure Gov. Kirk was present during the raid. “I guess you know I’m the governor,” the mysterious visitor told her, shaking her hand.  

He said he didn’t want any publicity.

Three weeks later, Kirk was at the closed Kitty’s Saloon with Palm Beach Sheriff William R. Heidtman to temporarily reopen it for a Life Magazine photographer. Kirk’s photo was taken as part of a story to be published by the magazine about the Outlaws. Also photographed was the saloon’s interior with the sign, "Cycles Rule - Surfers Drool."

Five members of the gang were tried for the nailing incident a year later, the news reported. The Outlaws continued to headline crime news in Florida for twenty more years.

Kirk served one term - 1967 until 1971. He was criticized for not attending to state business but national buzz during those years suggested he could have been tapped as Nixon’s vice-president. To his credit Claude Kirk is recognized as being Florida’s first environmental governor (Grunwald, Michael. The Swamp. New York: Simon & Schuster (2006). 

Copyright © 2012. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

Sources:

Palm Beach Post, Nov. 10, 1967

Miami News, Nov. 28, 1967

St. Petersburg Times, July 31, 1968

Tags: Juno Beach history, Gov. Kirk, Outlaw gang, Palm Beach history, Palm Beach County crime

Fort Lauderdale's Spring Break Days: When they were asked to leave

 

Spring break crowd 1962
Florida State Archives

By Jane Feehan

College students first came to Fort Lauderdale in 1935 as part of the Collegiate Aquatic Forum held at the Casino Pool during 10 days in December. The city extended an invitation to swimming coaches and students at 23 institutions the first year. By the 1950s, between four and five thousand students made their way to Fort Lauderdale during the annual swimming event and for Spring break; the city welcomed their business.

Things changed in 1961.

The movie, Where the Boys Are, released in December that year, linked Fort Lauderdale and Spring Break in the news and in the national consciousness. Crowds surged and a riot in March of 1962 spurred Mayor Edward Johns and Police Chief Lester Holt to demand that the students “get out of town.” 

Miami News reporter Henry Jones wrote: the “students … have given Fort Lauderdale a national reputation as the site of a spring orgy rivaling the exuberance of the Romans.”

Students ignored the order to get out of town and continued to flock annually - at times hundreds of thousands of them - to Fort Lauderdale. 

In 1982, two Yale graduates, Bruce Jacobsen and Rollin Riggs had a lot to say about Fort Lauderdale in their book, Rites of Spring: Students’ Guide to Spring Break in Florida. (Priam Books, 1982):

Fort Lauderdale is as loose on its morals as it is tight on its laws.

The town deserves its meat-market reputation: people are constantly sizing you up, weighing you and determining how much you cost with all the authority and insensitivity of a butcher.

A popular daytime diversion is to sit in lounge chairs or on a fence and heckle passersby.

Fort Lauderdale has as much dignity as pro wrestling or roller derby but provokes the same illicit sense of pleasure. If you can keep up with the great pace for a few days at a time, you’re bound to return with some great stories.

Jacobsen and Riggs listed places to stay:

Bahama Hotel, Fort Lauderdale Motel, Holiday Inn (Las Olas), Jolly Roger, Lauderdale Biltmore, Wish you Were Here Inn and the Xanadu.  Bar recommendations included: the Button, Elbo Room, Bojangles, Candy Store, and Mr. Pips. For dining they pointed to the Mai-Kai, Yesterday’s, Durty Nellie’s and the Crab Pot.

Most of those places are gone now – and so are large numbers of rowdy students. Fort Lauderdale clamped down the annual event in the mid 1980s with open container laws and traffic re-routing. 

The annual swim meet, the granddaddy of it all, has moved from Fort Lauderdale. The International Swimming Hall of Fame (www.ishof.org), a museum, remains. The new Fort Lauderdale Aquatic Complex opened January 2023.

©2011, 2021

__________ 

Sources:

Miami News, Dec. 24, 1935

Miami News, March 28, 1961

Jacobsen, Bruce and Riggs, Rollin. Rites of Spring: Students Guide to Spring Break in Florida. Priam Books 1982

Fort Lauderdale history, Spring break history, Collegiate Aquatic Forum Fort Lauderdale, college students, Fort Lauderdale spring break

Pioneer Frank Stranahan all business in romance

Stranahan House 1901 (replaced the original trading post)
State Archives of Florida 

Fort Lauderdale pioneer and trading post owner, Frank Stranahan (1865-1929) met Ivy Julia Cromartie, (1881-1971), a young teacher who had moved to his area from Lemon City (where Little Haiti is in Miami today) in 1899.

In an excerpt from a letter Frank wrote to Ivy (www.iamlasolas.com/pioneer-women-of-the-boulevard/) about their pending marriage in August 1900, it was more business than romance.

Wish to ask  you a question that I should have done a few days ago. I am getting the license. How do you wish your name to appear in it and age? I will see you Wednesday. This is the last letter that we will write to each other so will close with the last girl I kissed goodnight.

Frank

P.S. This has been written in a rush. Overlook the grammar.

Ivy served as the town's first teacher and contributed to the lives of local Seminoles through her foundation, Friends of the Seminoles.

See index or use search box for more posts on Frank Stranahan.

 ------ 

Frank Stranahan, born 1865, died by suicide in 1929:

https://janeshistorynook.blogspot.com/2021/01/fort-lauderdale-pioneer-frank.html

Sources: 

http://www.iamlasolas.com/pioneer-women-of-the-boulevard/

Florida International University, Historical Museum of Southern Florida

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale pioneers, Ivy Stranahan, Frank Stranahan, film researcher

Lauderdale-by-the-Sea's Anglin Fishing pier, once longest in Broward County

 

Anglin Fishing Pier
2 Commercial Blvd.
Lauderdale-By-The-Sea, FL 33308
954-491-9403
For more information on Broward County Piers
https://www.saltchef.com/catch_fish/FL/Broward/fishing_piers.html

Update: See web cam for Hurricane Nicole damage to Anglin's Pier (11/10/2022)

https://www.discoverlbts.com/live-beach-webcam/

By Jane Feehan

Lauderdale-By-The-Sea pioneer Melvin Anglin built Anglin (some now say Anglin's) Fishing Pier in 1941. No fisherman, Anglin was encouraged by his son, Tom, to build the structure to attract tourists to the small town north of Fort Lauderdale.

The original pier, made of wood, jutted out past the shoreline 800 feet into the water, over the first reef. Anglers cast their lines off its 100-foot-wide T at the farthest end. In those days, the cost to visit or fish from the pier was 10 cents. The wooden structure was rebuilt by the Anglins at least three times when hurricanes broke it apart. After a destructive storm, the family would salvage its wood planks anywhere from 10th Street in Fort Lauderdale north to Sea Ranch Lakes to begin construction anew.

Real estate agents Everett Sorensen and Frank Myatt (son of Lord’s Realty owner Ann Lord) bought the pier, not the land, with a 99-year lease in 1962. They rebuilt it with concrete pilings, extending its length to 876 feet. Anglin Fishing Pier (the name remained) reopened Nov. 22, 1963, the day President Kennedy was assassinated, according to Sorensen when he was interviewed in 2004.

After damage from Hurricane Irma in 2017 and Hurricane Nicole in 2022, the pier has been closed. Current (2024) owner Spiro Marchelos said repairs will begin in 2025.  Before storm damage, Anglin Fishing Pier had been extended to 900 feet. A large gap defines its current problems. A cafe operates on part of the structure during the day.

Dania Beach states its pier is 900 feet long. Deerfield Beach claims its pier is 976 feet in length and Pompano says its pier is about 876 feet. See https://www.saltchef.com/catch_fish/FL/Broward/fishing_piers.html.

Florida State Archives
/Florida Memory 1996

Copyright © 2012, 2021, 2024 All rights reserved. Jane Feehan. 

Copyright © 2021, 2022, 2024. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan

Sources:

Richard, Candace. Seventy-Three Years By The Sea. Lauderdale by the Sea: Town of of Lauderdale-By-The-Sea, 2000.

Miami News, Jan. 29, 1963

Sun-Sentinel, Jan. 3, 2002

Sun-Sentinel, Nov. 7, 2024

Tags: History of Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Lauderdale-by-the-Sea history, Broward County fishing piers

Tried and not true: a Florida attempt at Mardi Gras

 

Seminoles dancing on Clematis Street
West Palm Beach 1916
State of Florida Archives

We all know about the dollars and attention Mardi Gras generates for New Orleans, but few remember West Palm Beach once vied for a similar event in the early 1900s. The business community was eager to elevate the profile of this new South Florida city; New Orleans was its inspiration.

With an idea and vague plan, a committee of businessmen in 1916 set out for the Everglades to solicit the participation of Tony Tommie (1889-1931), a young Seminole they thought was chief.

A caption underneath a photo of Tommie used to promote the event read:  “Tony Tommie is the newly-elected Chief of the Tommie tribe of Seminoles who has agreed to bring his tribe to the Palm Beach Seminole Sun Dance.”

Tony Tommie and wife Edna John Tommie 1926
State of Florida Archives/Florida Memory

The first Seminole to attend a white school, Tommie was never chief but often spoke unofficially for his people. He did agree to bring other Seminoles to the first event, named the Seminole Sun Dance.

Seminole traditions never included a Sun Dance but that didn’t bother anyone. The first event, launched with $1000 and high hopes, was held in the spring of 1916 and continued each year until 1923.  It included Seminoles in their traditional dress marching side by side with costumed white participants in a parade.  A beauty contest, baby parade, marching bands and other elements were added over the years. 

After 1923, the fest was held intermittently until the 1950s.  In 1959, some called for the event to be made permanent, but it never came to pass. Needless to say, nor did an event comparable to the New Orleans Mardi Gras ever materialize.

Today, Sunfest (sunfest.com), an annual three-day music festival, offers no similarities to its Seminole Sun Dance predecessor.  

-------- 

Sources:

Palm Beach Post, Feb. 17, 1916 

Palm Beach Post, May 3, 1955 

Tags: Florida history, West Palm Beach history, West Palm in the 1900s, Tony Tommie, 
film researcher, Palm Beach County history

Florida welcomes S&H Green Stamps 1961

Indiana Messenger Oct. 26, 1910

By Jane Feehan

The stuff of mid-20th century American shopping, S&H Green Stamps entered the South Florida market during May 1961 when Sperry Hutchinson inked deals with W.T. Grant’s, Winn Dixie, and Publix. South Florida was the final U.S. market the company penetrated. Redemption centers opened in the Fort Lauderdale/ Miami area in July that year.

Sperry Hutchinson began distributing stamps in 1896. The stamps, in denominations of one, ten and fifty points, were bonuses to shoppers based on dollars spent. Shoppers could redeem books of 1200 points for merchandise at redemption centers. Green stamps reached the zenith of their popularity in the 1960s. Recessions and competitors diminished the company’s market share of shopping bonus programs by the 1970s.

Tallahassee into
 S&H Green Stamps 1966
Florida State Archives

S&H filed for bankruptcy in 1996. In 2000, the company merged with Xinetix, Inc., a Fort Lauderdale operator of supermarket loyalty programs.  S&H launched the Greenpoints program (Greenpoints.com), a shopping bonus program for online purchases, in 2001.

____________

Sources:

Miami News, May 15, 1961

Information Week, March 18, 2002: 

SHSolutions.com

Wikipedia

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Florida in the 1960s, Miami in the 1960s, film researcher

Tourism in 1942 Fort Lauderdale : Jungle Queen, horseback riding and ...

 

Abeona - Everglades cruises
 Florida State Archives

 1942

The "season" of 1942 went into full swing in Fort Lauderdale, despite the war, blackouts and ships being torpedoed off the Atlantic coast. The Fort Lauderdale Times frequently advertised things to do in the area for recreation: a ride on the "Good Ship" Jungle Queen (still operating), horse back riding, boating, drinking ... and more as posted in the ad below.

Fort Lauderdale Times, 1942

Jungle Queen, Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

Tags: History of Fort Lauderdale, Fort Lauderdale tourism, Fort Lauderdale during WWII