When Hurricane Ivan nearly leveled the Flora-Bama Lounge in 2004, predictions were that the venerable roadhouse on the Florida–Alabama state line would be gone forever. Once an icon of the Redneck Riviera, the Flora-Bama was to be replaced, it was feared, by yet another high-rise condominium to create a nearly continuous “condo canyon” stretching from Gulf Shores, Alabama, to Perdido Key, Florida (and not unlike the coastal landscape of Waikiki or Ft. Lauderdale). And the local crowd of bikers, Southern belles, and mullet-tossing rednecks would be replaced by penny-pinching Midwestern snowbirds or retirees. But, against all odds, the owners vowed to rebuild the bar to its prehurricane shanty style and preserve that redneck honky-tonk image it had cultivated for more than four decades. The Redneck Riviera could not be allowed to die.
Alone among geographers who regionalized North America, the late Terry Jordan delineated the Gulf Coast as a distinct culture region with the United States. This book by Harvey H. Jackson, III, eminent scholar of history at Jacksonville State University, reinforces that regional distinctiveness by examining the easternmost reaches of Jordan's Gulf Coast: the self-described Redneck Riviera. Although this vernacular term has been applied to a myriad of places from Port Aransas, Texas, to Apalachicola, Florida, this book focuses on the “core area” from Gulf Shores, Alabama, east to Panama City Beach, Florida. Jackson, a native “inland” Alabamian who grew up frequenting the Alabama coast as well as his grandparents' beach cottage at Seagrove Beach, Florida (adjacent to Seaside), is well acquainted with and well qualified to write about the Redneck Riviera.
Since the boom years of the Roaring 1920s, the shoreline of lower Alabama (or LA, a region that includes both the two coastal counties of Alabama as well as that part of the Florida panhandle due south of the state of Alabama) has been popular for recreation and tourism. Over time, the recreational hinterland (or market area) for this stretch of coast has expanded from purely local to more broadly Southern and finally to national (mostly Midwestern) and even international (especially Ontario snowbirds). As the clientele has grown and evolved, so have patterns of land use and coastal attitudes. Terms such as Pleasure Island, the Miracle Strip, and the Emerald Coast have been introduced to downplay the local origins of beach recreation, but somehow the term Redneck Riviera never totally goes away.
Harvey Jackson's aim in this book is to document “how the Redneck Riviera began, what it became, and what is happening to it now.” He begins his story in the 1920s and ends with the impacts of the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The seventeen chapters are organized as “time slices,” each covering a five-to-ten-year slice of time, each focused on a theme (or interrelated sets of themes), and each covering as much of the Redneck Riviera region as pertains to the theme. Chapter themes include the post–World War II boom, marketing the coast, creating the Redneck Riviera image, Hurricane Frederic and its impacts, the “Seasiding” of the Redneck Riviera, taming the Redneck Riviera, Spring Break and “going wild,” the go-go years of the 1990s, shoreline erosion and beach nourishment, and the 2010 BP oil spill.
The region that encompasses the Redneck Riviera contains both concentrated and dispersed clusters of beach resorts, and each has a distinct personality and client base. Gulf Shores/Orange Beach, Alabama and Panama City, Florida are mass tourist drive-to destinations with many motel rooms and many entertainment attractions. Destin, Florida is a former fishing village that embraced growth in the condominium era and is now smothered with high-rises and shopping malls. Others, such as the string of beach communities in Walton County—epitomized by Seaside, made famous by the film The Truman Show—are more sedate, single-family-home vacation destinations. The remaining resorts—Pensacola Beach, Navarre Beach, Fort Walton Beach, and Sandestin (all in Florida)—are intermediate in terms of levels of development, yet distinctive in their own ways.
By concentrating his narrative on both the tourists (including recreationists, second-home owners, and retirees) as well as the destinations, Jackson deftly interweaves social history with land-use change. Familiar with the region since the 1950s, Jackson sprinkles his narrative with numerous anecdotes, remembrances of restaurants and bars, and personal observations of changes in visitors and the built environment. The stories flow so well that it seems as if one were reading a work of fiction rather than a history book. As a complex parade of characters in a novel, each seaside destination has an evolving storyline that weaves through the chapters from beginning to end and presents an ever-changing list of colorful characters that influenced it. This book is an excellent historical geography that incorporates social history to tell the tale of a unique American region. Although the two maps are a bit skimpy, the sixty-eight black-and-white photographs provide valuable images to accompany the words. Geographers, especially those who consider themselves students of popular culture, will love this book.
Physical geography, on the other hand, gets short shrift. There is some discussion of the physical setting, the shifting inlets, dune and coastal erosion, hurricanes, and beach nourishment, and for most general readers this is sufficient. For many geographers, however, there might not be enough about the Pleistocene sand bluffs, the dune lakes of Walton County, the migrating tidal inlets (including the migrating Florida–Alabama border until it was “fixed”), the extensive pine forests, and the unique species (red-cockaded woodpeckers, beach mice) that occupy this area of high biodiversity. These physical characteristics have added ecotourism value to the region, but little of this is discussed.
Culturally, there is some unevenness as well. This region has a disproportionately high number of military bases, including Pensacola Naval Air Station and Eglin, Hurlburt, and Tyndall Air Force Bases, and they have diluted the “redneckness” of the Redneck Riviera. Although the author discusses the military contribution to the distinctive resort “personalities” to a small degree, this topic deserves further discussion. Also, there is a slight weighting of the narrative toward the beach destinations with which the author is most familiar (e.g., the Alabama coast, Panama City, Seaside, and Destin). The Florida stretch from Pensacola Beach to Fort Walton Beach receives a bit less attention, and several minor errors were noted in the discussion of Pensacola (e.g., save for the highway and the beachfront casino, there was no true development here until the 1950s).
But these are minor criticisms of what is, overall, an excellent book that I would recommend to anyone who wishes to know about this section of the Gulf Coast and its cultural origins. Geographers wishing to better understand a region or a landscape must “peel back the layers” to see the true cultural (and physical) underpinnings. In this book, Harvey Jackson peels back those layers for us. As the region once labeled as the Redneck Riviera becomes less Southern (and definitely less redneck as upscale, white-collar Southerners from Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis, Dallas, and Houston buy up properties), Jackson reminds us of how it all began and evolved. No matter how much the landscape has been altered by condominiums, Seaside-style pastel-colored beach “cottages,” and chain motels and restaurants, the “redneck” aspect of the Redneck Riviera survives, especially along the Alabama coast.