Re: [BNW] Reasons for CaC to be

[The White Crow <whytcrow@io.com>]

As a long-time survivor of a beach-side Florida community... ;)


> > * a tourist driven economy
>
>Most definitely this would be of the factors - rather small scale
>though. No resorts, but lots of small motels, hotels appartments,
>boat tours through the islands, fishing, etc.

There is always tourism.  The small towns get the folks who are trying to 
get away from the big towns.  If it is on the Atlantic side, there's 
potenially good surfing as well, which would attract folks no matter how 
small the town.  (New Smyrna Beach has hosted international surfing 
competitions)

>And of course a few beaches.

And you can drive on them, except at night in places (especially during sea 
turtle season, where the beach side lights all have to be off)

> > * an industrial one that supports outlying farms and production centers
>
>Not really much industry here. Outside of town you'd find a lot of
>farms for oranges and grapefruit, and processing for that near town -
>but thats about it. Of course city council has tried to attract quite
>a bit of service industry, most recently Neptune Corp. established a
>research center.

There wouldn't be much industry, although Edgewater (where I actually lived 
-- New Smyrna is just north of it) had the facilities for a company making 
a mag-lev train.  Lots of boat construction companies and the weird economy 
that builds up around them.

>no military base, but the coast guard has an office and a pier here.
>Its not what you could call a base though.

Yep.  Sounds about right.

> > * a city defined a past historical need and now foundering to find its 
> place
>
>Well, we could come up with something. Anybody have a grasp on history
>in Florida? It had to be settled somewhere...
>
>A Fort in the "pacification effort" against the Seminoles? Against
>pirate activities? Secret assembly area for the invasion of the bay of
>pigs?

A lot of these places were originally Am. Indian settlements -- and then 
the Spanish came in.  But there's not a lot of forts (although St. 
Augustine's is very neat and well worth a look).  History tends to get lost 
in the tourism unless there's some really cool leftovers (like the fort and 
old town in St. Aug.).

> > * Just one of those places which seems to have had none of the above, but
> > prospered anyway.
>
>It has a lot, and to boot, the Indians shunned the area. Nobody lived
>here or further inland, although they buried their dead nearby...

There's probably large shell mounds around.  That's one thing where there 
often is a lot of history...the whole state seems made of shells.  There 
were "shell pits" as we called them near my house, now lakes -- places 
where they mine the shells (fairly small ones) and grind them up to use for 
dirt roads.  There's even some *sand plants* where, yes, they make sand.

In addition to oranges, they grow pine trees for Christmas trees and 
there's large fern farms, although I never figured out quite what the ferns 
were grown for.  They grow them in the opposite of greenhouses -- big 
buildings that are made of dark screens, to block out light.

Jennifer

Jennifer
--
The White Crow
Author:  The Deryni Roleplaying Game (Coming Nov. 2001, Grey Ghost Press)
My RPG pages:  http://www.io.com/~whytcrow/
Living Writing: A Column at http://www.free-epress.com/columns/index.htm