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Florida Views: Development and Vision

This collection showcases stereoscopic views from the late 19th and early 20th centuries depicting locations around Florida. The cards capture a time in American history when Florida experienced tremendous growth in industry, development, tourism, and agriculture. Many of the cards serve to entice visitors and record the natural beauty and wonder of this unique geographic area. The stereoscopes are housed in the the collections of the Matheson History Museum in Gainesville, Florida. In addition to stereograph cards, this collection includes texts related to the history and development of the state. These texts are often complementary resources to the scenes and descriptions on the cards and include a mixture of travelogues, histories, and government documents. 

 

About the Matheson History Museum

The Matheson History Museum has been preserving and interpreting the rich history of Alachua County, Florida since 1994. The museum complex includes the Matheson History Museum and Helen Ellerbe Library, the Matheson House, the Tison Tool Barn, and Sweetwater Park. Among other unique materials, the library houses a collection of historic Florida postcards, the Elmer Harvey Bone photograph collection, and over 1,000 Florida Stereographs.

 

About Rebecca Fitzsimmons

Rebecca was a graduate student at the University of South Florida (USF) in 2011 when she completed this project. She earned her Master of Library and Information Science from USF in 2011. She also holds a Bachelor of Fine Art from Syracuse University and a Master of Fine Art from the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign; her BFA and MFA concentrations were in photography and digital art.

Rebecca interned at the Matheson History Museum from 2010 to 2012, where she scanned and cataloged the entire collection of Florida stereographs and compiled a finding aid to the collection.