The History of North America podcast is a sweeping historical saga of the United States,

Canada, and Mexico from their deep origins to our present epoch.

Join me, Mark Vinet, on this exciting, fascinating epic journey through time, focusing on the compelling,

wonderful, and tragic stories of North America's inhabitants, heroes, villains, leaders,

environment, and geography.

I invite you to come along for the ride.

History is in just a bunch of names and dates and facts.

It's the collection of all the stories throughout human history that explain how and why we got here.

Welcome to the History and Plug podcast, where we look at the forgotten, neglected, strange,

and even counterfactual stories that made our world what it is.

I'm your host, Scott Rank.

Before you head to Yawana, before you had Las Vegas, before you head to Lannock City,

if there was a place you wanted to go to for vice, for alcohol, for prostitution,

that place in America was Florida.

Florida was sort of the capital of the 1920s.

In that decade, it had the largest human migration in American history, way more than the west,

where Americans flocked to hotels, and new cities that sprang out practically overnight from the wetlands.

Developers also made millions upon millions upon millions of dollars,

and plenty of celebrities had second homes there at this time.

This was the decade of prohibition, but drinking was condoned here, and so was gambling.

But this building boom was so dramatic that when the bubble finally popped,

it made the great recession in the 2000s, Lecumble by Comparison,

...