Cypress Gardens

Central Florida's First Theme Park and Longest Running Tourist Attraction
Part 1

by Anthony Scaggs
Golf Clubs, Golf Resorts, Golf Courses

The beauty and serenity of Cypress Gardens captures your imagination and calms your spirit.

Cypress Gardens did not always look like this. Cypress Gardens was Dick Pope's vision, which he helped carve out of a swamp. While Florida was in the grip of the 1932 depression, Dick Pope persuaded the government, to beautify and rebuild the canals as well as the chain of lakes, which was the beginning of Cypress Gardens.

Pope began constructing his dream garden.

Working side by side with the laborers in the muck, Pope began constructing his dream garden. Many in the press laughed at the idea of building a beautiful tropical showcase in the middle of a 16-acre marsh, calling him "Maharaja of Muck" and "Swami of the Swamp," but he persevered. Dick didn't know one flower from another, but Julie Pope, his wife, knew plants, loved them and had a "green thumb."