Florida’s First Theme Park

By Tom Poland
February 28, 2014

Gave Southerners A Case Of Ski Envy

In the 1960s a lot of cool guys were into water skiing. I got into it too. Learning to take off from shore standing on one leg was an even bigger deal. No matter how well you skied though, not having a big name ski rubbed luster off your accomplishment. A cheap ski might as well be a plank. A Dick Pope Jr. ski, however, carried cachet.

Pope’s ski sported gorgeous gold and red cypress, a lustrous finish, and snug rubber boots. Firmly planted in one those boots hip guys performed watery acrobatics across many a lake’s veneer. White feathery contrail-like wakes rippled their fame from shore to shore.

Another cool ski to own was an Alfredo Mendoza. We called it a Mendoza. With it, skiers jumped wakes and launched themselves into the stratosphere. I had no idea who Pope and Mendoza were, just that their skis represented the supreme, and frustratingly, I didn’t own either.

Life moved on and my skiing days ended, killing my envy of Pope and Mendoza skis. College, career, and family matters rearranged priorities. And then many years later, thirty to be precise, an editor by the name of Lisa Dionne called me. She worked for Ski Boat magazine. Would you like to do a story on Cypress Garden’s 60th Anniversary?

I know a good photographer I told her.

Two weeks later Robert Clark and I were driving down I-95, the Snowbird Flyway, to Winter Haven, Florida. I was about to learn a lot about Popes Sr. and Jr. and Mendoza. Pope was a waterbug. Early on he was boating and skiing. Dick Pope Sr. and Jr. gave skiing legitimacy. In 1928, Dick Pope Sr. leaped off a wooden ramp, soaring 25 feet, the first person to pull off such a feat. Dick Pope Jr. was the first person to ski barefoot, and word of these exploits spread. The name Pope meant everything when it came to skiing. When the Dick Pope signature went on skis, well, they sold pretty damn good.

Pope Sr. was brash and he was perceptive. In the late 1950s and 1960s Americans, in love with their cars and shaking off World War II blues, were establishing the summer vacation tradition. Travel is the third largest industry in America, observed Pope, and we want to be the biggest thing in it. Thus it was that he created Florida’s first theme park, Cypress Gardens, a park that paved the way for more grandiose parks. Were it not for him, Disney World would not have come to Florida. Pope pushed Cypress Gardens into the public’s consciousness using everything from place restaurant mats and menu covers to jigsaw puzzles and the covers of phonograph albums. Legend maintains that it was Pope who invented Florida’s image of beautiful women, palm trees, exotic flowers, and sun-splashed landscapes.

Born in Iowa in 1900 Pope’s family moved to Florida where he spent his teens in Winter Haven at his father’s real estate office. Pope and his brother Malcolm were known for their boating regattas, held on Winter Haven’s lakes.

One day Pope read a story in Good Housekeeping about a man who opened his home to the public and charged admission. That man, a millionaire in Charleston, South Carolina, charged 18,000 people a year two bucks a head to tour his estate’s gardens. Thirty-six thousand dollars just for letting people look at flowers—that sounded pretty good to me, said Pope. Pope decided to do the same thing on a far grander scale. He and his wife, Julie, dreamed of a botanical wonderland along the shores of Lake Eloise. Water, flowers, and exotic plants, those were to be the stars, not skiers, but fate had something else in mind.

The Popes turned a swamp into a paradise. On January 2, 1936, his dream became a reality. Pope, who had talent for promotion, lured visitors by distributing thousands of newsreels and photos to the press. Hucksterism sent Pope on his way and he would become known as the Father of Florida Tourism, but it would be up to Julie to get the water ski show going.

In 1943, a local newspaper ran a photo featuring water-skiers on Lake Eloise. Servicemen from the Naval Training Station in Orlando saw the photo. A busload of servicemen headed over to Dick and Julie’s park to see the water show. There was just one small problem. No such show existed.

Julie rounded up her children and friends and staged an impromptu water ski show. The next weekend 800 servicemen showed up and a world-famous water ski show was off and running. Water skiing, Cypress Gardens, and splendid gardens became synonymous. Life magazine called Cypress Gardens a photographer’s paradise. Robert knew this and we anticipated some beautiful shots, though most of our work would involve the ski show.

The garden’s beautiful setting had lured Hollywood movie producers in the late 1940s and early 1950s. On An Island With You, Easy To Love, and This Is Cinema were all filmed at Dick Pope’s swamp-turned-dreamscape. In Easy To Love, Esther Williams lounged in a Florida-shaped pool filled with oranges.

Robert and I were decades late. The good days were past. Esther’s forlorn pool sat unused in the Botanical Garden by Lake Eloise. Stagnant, it portrayed a scummy Florida. From 1936 to 1985 the Pope family had owned the water ski capital of the world. In the ensuing years things got a bit fuzzy as Henley sang in the Garden of Allah and ownership passed to Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and Anheuser-Busch, and later, a management group. A promise was made to preserve the park’s heritage as a world-famous botanical garden and water ski capital. A bit too was said about adding new entertainment elements. That proved true and ultimately morphed Pope’s original dream into something else. As its run ended the park experienced closures and re-openings, eventually closing for good. Today there is no Cypress Gardens. In its place you will find Legoland Florida. Here, read this exciting copy from Legoland’s website.

LEGOLAND® Florida, Central Florida’s newest theme park, is a 150-acre, full two-day interactive family theme park specifically designed for families with children ages 2 to 12. The largest LEGOLAND Park in the world, it features more than 50 rides, shows, and attractions, restaurants, shopping, a breathtaking botanical garden and the all-new LEGOLAND Water Park.

Enough about that. Return with me to the four days I spent at Cypress Gardens. During shows, Robert and I rode in a MasterCraft pulling women who formed pyramids, topped by a woman hoisting a U.S. flag. We had something a lot better than a front-row seat but it was anything but smooth. The boat rocked hard on Lake Eloise. It was a bit chilly. Talking above the engine was impossible. The drivers used hand signals to communicate their intricate maneuvers.

 

It was January, and crowds were thin. I recall being distracted by a bald eagle wheeling high above Lake Eloise. Sitting in the grandstand and on grassy shores people were a bit sedate. Only when four Rampmasters shot across ramps at 60 miles per hour executing crisscrossing jumps and helicopter spins did Oooohs and aaahs at last escape. The drivers’ and skiers’ expressions betrayed emotion; there was nowhere else they’d rather be.

To ski behind a sleek MasterCraft was a dream many realized here. To pilot the MasterCraft was a lofty ambition too. Great athletes passed through here, among them an older fellow, Banana George Blair, known for his barefooting and trademark banana yellow wetsuit. (He skied barefoot until he was 92.) The skiers spoke with reverence of preceding generations of skiers.

We saw it all. Robert and I were allowed into the dressing room where the girls donned their exotic costumes. A sign above the exit door read, Through these doors pass the world’s greatest skiers and drivers. Nearby another sign implored the team to Perform like champions. One show at a time.

The ultimate destination for ambitious skiers, Cypress Gardens was the birthplace of more than 50 waterskiing innovations, including the world’s only five-tier human pyramid. The show Robert and I covered for Ski Boat had come a long way from the mid-1940’s revues for soldiers and sailors. The shows we saw served up a fare of jumping, barefoot skiing, pyramids, comedy, hang gliding, delta wing kites, and skiing innovations. Ice skater Alfredo Mendoza had skied at Pope’s ski Mecca many years earlier. He brought some of ice skating’s innovations to the water, the Adagio doubles, a series of lifts and graceful ballet moves.

From Winter Haven the idea that skiing was cool spread across the land. It found willing ears and strong legs at the major reservoirs of the South. Boys with time on their hands and ambition in their hearts found that skiing was one way to rise above anonymity. 

I never owned a Dick Pope ski. I skied on a friend’s though, just once. Back then, in the mid 60s, I had no idea who Richard Downing Dick Pope was, only that people coveted his skis. Now he is gone, having died in 1988. He used his time on earth, on water I should say, to change life for many. For certain the self-proclaimed Grand Poobah of Publicity changed Florida forever. A visionary, he turned a swamp into a paradise peopled with leggy girls in alluring swimsuits. The dream flourished and exuded a charisma uniquely its own. Hollywood loved it and soldiers loved it and Bermuda-short-wearing, knee-sock-clad retirees loved it too. And flower seekers and thrill-seeking drivers and skiers worshipped it. And to think all that skiing started as an accident.

By the time Robert and I arrived the place seemed threadbare, a ghost of itself, its better days best viewed from a MasterCraft’s rearview mirror. What I liked best about the place was the botanical garden’s banyan tree. From a five-gallon bucket in 1939 it had grown mightily. Its soaring wings had spread and its aerial roots had tapped into Desoto’s Land of Flowers. I liked, too, the bougainvillea, azaleas, and chrysanthemums that drenched the place in color.

I can’t speak for you but I’ve found my life to be a magical chain of coincidences and clairvoyance. Between my early days envying those who owned Dick Pope skis and my only trip to Winter Haven, my one exposure to Cypress Gardens was as a boy. I saw its ski team perform a pyramid on television. I’d like to see that in person, I thought so many years ago. Well, I did.

When I left Cypress Gardens that January day in 1996, evening was coming down and the day’s last show was underway. The call of an osprey drifted over the water. Crows clamored from atop a moss-draped cypress. Landscaping lights twinkled along the park’s oaks, hedges, and waterfalls, and the Aqua Maids were ski-dancing and a’prancing across the water as the emcee exulted, Poetry in motion. Nearby an electric tour boat whirred through cypress and kapok trees. Cajun music echoed through Florida’s original theme park, a place once described as the most successful swamp in America. Indeed it was, a forerunner of Disney World, Epcot, Sea World, and more.

I looked out on Lake Eloise one last time. As the grand finale unfolded, men on skis, Dick Pope skis I assumed, traced feathery spirals and swirls onto the water, sending up cascades. I felt good, having extracted an old festering splinter on this trip. I never did own a Dick Pope ski but I had appeared as a participant, if you will, in Pope’s spectacle that turned a lot of Southern boys onto water skiing so long ago. In the end, that was better than owning a Dick Pope ski.

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Tom Poland is the author of seven books and more than 700 magazine features. A Southern writer, his work has appeared in magazines throughout the South. The University of South Carolina Press just released his book on how the blues became the shag, Save The Last Dance For Me. He writes a weekly column for newspapers in Georgia and South Carolina about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and changing culture.