Anyone who has ever spent any time along the coast of Alabama and Florida panhandle knows that this vacation destination is defined by both the best and the worst of what nature and the tourism industry can provide. Scenic views of picturesque beaches and some of the most beautiful waters on the Gulf Coast are periodically marred by blistering heat, torrential downpours, and threats of savage hurricanes. Serene afternoons spent enjoying the sea breeze and listening to the waves happen in the shadow of towering condominiums that have transformed once-scenic coastal roads into canyons of development and sprawl. Delicious fresh-catch seafood is served up in iconic establishments sitting alongside kitschy souvenir shops specializing in tacky gifts. Those across the Deep South and beyond nevertheless love “the beach” and set vacation calendars around the coveted opportunity for a few days of sun, sand, and fried seafood in the area and enjoy it for what it is and is not. To the modern visitor it can seem as if this is the way it has always been, a glittering series of accommodations and entertainment crowded along the sandy shores of the Gulf. The fact that the region, the self-proclaimed “Redneck Riviera” to those who know it best, is a relatively new phenomenon with rather shallow roots as a community may come as a surprise to some. Its relative youth is revealed to the historian by the fact that, as a distinct region, it has one of the thinnest historiographies of any area of the South.
Harvey Jackson, one of Alabama’s most respected historians, turned his attention to chronicling this coastal region as a unique place unto itself a decade ago with The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera. A now retired professor at Jacksonville State University and a lifelong frequent visitor to and part-time resident of “the beach,” Jackson is uniquely qualified to chronicle the region’s past from the vantage point of both a scholar and an insider. The book is a testament to his abilities on both counts, featuring as it does an impressive command of sources revealing the major events which have defined the area’s startling development in recent decades to his intimate knowledge of how what is there today came about and how what once was disappeared. I recently had a chance to listen to an audiobook version of the title.
The book follows the development of the beach region from a primitive backwater with few amenities that, in the days prior to air conditioning, was little more than the seasonal haunt of fishermen and the occasional gathering place of primarily Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida working class families to the modern tourist hub it has become since the 1980s. Jackson brings to life some of the early landmark mom-and-pop establishments around which beach attractions sprang up in the post-World War II era and chronicles in detail the rather sudden rise of the multi-story accommodation complexes which shut them all down. Along the way he studies how spring break became a right of passage for American teens and a cash cow for local business owners, and how the excesses of those teens turned loose on vacation (the sordid saga of “Girls Gone Wild” in Panama City is explored among others) brought sometimes unwanted national attention to the beaches and a reevaluation of what tourism niche they fit that is still in some ways ongoing.
Jackson explores the impact of the numerous real estate ventures which, as much as anything, transformed the look and feel of beach communities including Panama City, Destin, Gulf Shores, and Orange Beach. He also helps frame all this within the context of the transformative hurricanes which have periodically swept away the region’s existing built environments and launched the beginning of new ones. The book is a history of a place with a focus on how and why it stands today as it is, and naturally cannot be complete without some exploration into its troubled natural history. This includes the aforementioned hurricanes and the way their yearly threat hangs over life in the region to the infamous oil spill in 2010 and the way it highlighted the fragile nature of the environment that people so desire to immerse themselves in on their beach vacations. Readers follow this story through both an analysis of the economic and environmental devastation of the oil spill and the wave of federal regulations concerning the habitats of creatures such as sea turtles and beach mice which aroused so much angst all along the Gulf Coast at one time.
In Jackson’s earthy, humorous but insightful writing style, The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera lays out how and why a long-ignored and sparsely populated region which barely figured into Southern history for hundreds of years in just a few decades of booming twentieth-century development emerged as a modern tourism colossus. In an easy-flowing narrative, Jackson paints an approachable portrait of a place he genuinely loves. The book is a mix of scholarly analysis and nostalgia which treats with equal sincerity the stories of real estate speculation, disputes over property rights, natural disasters, unrestrained teenagers, and how unorthodox traditions such as the tossing of dead mullet along the Alabama-Florida state line have combined. In the end, he demonstrates that in some ways, the true sense of place of “the beach” is rooted more in a state of mind than any physical location. The book is worth the time if you have an interest in the stories that lie in the shadow of all those condominiums.
JMB
The Historians Manifesto 
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