Central Florida
Encompassing a broad and fertile expanse between the east and
west coasts, most of central Florida was farming country
when vacation-mania first struck the beachside strips. From the
1970s on, this picture of tranquility was shattered: no section of
the state has been affected more dramatically by modern tourism,
and the most visited part of Florida can also be one of the
ugliest. A clutter of freeway interchanges, motels and billboards
arches around the small city of Orlando , where a
tourist-dollar chase of Gold Rush magnitude was sparked by Walt
Disney World , the biggest and cleverest theme-park complex
ever created. The rest of central Florida is quiet by comparison,
and, north of Orlando particularly, rural towns like Ocala
typify the state before the arrival of the highways and of
vacations spun around "attractions."
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