Disney World at 50: Florida Panhandle could have been theme park’s home

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In the 1960s, businessman Walt Disney was captivated by Wakulla Springs, one of the most beautiful natural sites in Florida. But the powerful financier who controlled the Panhandle site blew him off, according to lore.

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As Walt Disney World continues its 50th birthday celebrations, a national media organization has revived musings about how a powerful businessman was rumored to have single-handedly prevented the theme park empire from taking root in the Florida Panhandle.

Ed Ball, “the story goes, blew off Walt Disney and what could have been a $100 billion opportunity for north Florida,” the USA Today Network wrote in a recap published Thursday.

Walt Disney reportedly “wanted to buy some 28,000 acres to develop Walt Disney World and a complex of resorts and hotels back in the 1960s,” according to the report.

• TRAVEL

Florida Springs Guide: Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park

JUL 02, 2013 AT 2:00 PM

 

Disney was captivated by Wakulla Springs, one of the most beautiful natural sites in Florida.

Ball had created the Wakulla Springs tourist attraction in 1937 after purchasing the land a few years earlier, according to Florida State Parks.

A headline in the Pensacola News Journal in August 1959 declared: “Wakulla Springs May Be Disneyland, Fla.”

But as it turns out, Ball refused to even meet with Disney, categorizing him as “carnival people,” former St. Joe CEO Peter Rummel told Fortune Magazine.

“Could you imagine if Walt Disney got his hands on Wakulla Springs?” Tallahassee Democrat columnist Mark Hinson said his father speculated in the late 1970s. “The whole Panhandle would look like the Orange Blossom Trail. Nothing but strip clubs, prostitutes and urban sprawl.”

Yet, Ball’s St. Joe Paper Co. did its own damage to that part of the state, as it “devastated much of the region’s natural long leaf pines and tapped millions of gallons from the Florida aquifer,” the Florida Times-Union reported.

Ball, who owned millions of acres of land, also controlled a variety of business interests including “telephone companies, a sugar company and massive banking and railroad interests,” according to the Florida Times-Union.

• DISNEY WORLD 50TH ANNIVERSARY

 

Disney, of course, ended up targeting south Orlando, where Interstate 4 and the Florida Turnpike meet — an area that in the early 1960s had almost nothing but acres of nature.

Disney went to great lengths to keep his land buys under wraps, but a few weeks before the official announcement, the Orlando Sentinel reported: “The Sentinel has pieced together bits of information from many parts of the nation and believes it can authoritatively state that the long-rumored ‘mystery industry’ in Orange and Osceola Counties is a Disney attraction.”

Disney World at 50 series

Read the Orlando Sentinel’s “Disney World at 50″ series — a year’s worth of stories leading up to the 50th anniversary of the historic opening of Walt Disney World on Oct. 1, 1971. Find stories, photos and videos at OrlandoSentinel.com/wdw50.

 

The front page of the October 21, 1965 edition of the Orlando Sentinel with the lede headline of "Is Our 'Mystery' Industry Disneyland?' The story by Sentinel reporter Emily Bavar was the first to say that large real estate buys in Central Florida were going to be used by Walt Disney to expand his entertainment empire into what would eventually become Walt Disney World with the opening of Magic Kingdom in October, 1971. (handout / Orlando Sentinel)

 

Tiffini Theisen

Orlando Sentinel