This is an iHeart Podcast. Did you know Tide has been upgraded to provide an even better clean and cold water? Tide is specifically designed to fight any stain you throw at it. even in cold. Butter?
Yep. Chocolate ice cream? Sure thing. Barbecue sauce? tides got you covered.
You don't need to use warm water. Additionally, Tied pods let you confidently fight tough stains with new ColdZheim technology. Just remember, if it's gotta be clean, it's gotta be tied. Let's be real. Life happens.
Kids spill. Pets shed. And accidents are inevitable. Find a sofa that can keep up at washablesofas.com. Starting at just $699, our sofas are fully machine washable inside and out.
So you can say goodbye to stains and hello to worry-free living. Made with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics. They're kid-proof, pet-friendly, and built for everyday life. Plus, changeable fabric covers let you refresh your sofa whenever you want. Neat flexibility?
Our modular design lets you rearrange your sofa anytime to fit your space, whether it's a growing family room or a cozy apartment. Plus, they're earth-friendly and trusted by over 200,000 happy customers. It's time to upgrade to a stress-free, mess-proof sofa. Visit washablefas.com today and save. That's washablesofas.com.
Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. iHeart presents the Big Three Playoffs. This Sunday, the remaining four teams battle to make the championship in the most physical, fierce, and competitive basketball league in the world. The action starts with the Big Three Monster Energy Celebrity Game. Then Dwight Howard and his Ellie Riot take on Montrez Harrell and Dr.
J Chicago Triplets. The finale will see popular Miami 305 with stars MVP Michael Beasley and Lance Stevenson take on Nancy Lieberman's Dallas Power, who will make it to the Big Three Championship. The no-holds bought action starts Sunday at 3 p.m. Eastern, 12 Pacific, only on CBS. From Bitcoin believers to cautious first-timers, Kraken makes it easy to trade crypto in seconds.
With over 350 tokens, height spreads, and easy funding for your account with Plaid, PayPal, and Apple Pay, Kraken lets you trade, earn, and invest on your own terms. Download Kraken today and get $10 in Bitcoin after your first trade of $10 or more. Just enter code iHeart10 under Ad Invite Code when you sign up. Not investment advice, crypto trading involves risk of loss and is offered to U.S. customers through Payward Interactive Inc.
Terms and Conditions Apply. Yeah. Homes.com is the only place where you can find specialized neighborhood guides with the in-depth insider info home shoppers want. Very in-depth info. Want to know if there's homes for sale in the area?
We've got it. How long has a home been on the market? We'll know it. Average lot size? Uh-huh.
Proximity to local parks? Of course. Insight into your neighbor's divorce? We're working on it. Homes.com.
We've done your homework. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. To search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our country is filled with many different kinds of states, filled with different kinds of people.
Some of our states are filled with people from other states. Here to tell the story of who sold Florida. is Jason Vuick. Author of The Swamp Peddlers. Take it away, Jason.
So, when I was growing up, people would go, hey, ah, Florida boy, you know, what was the beach like growing up? And I'm like, I didn't grow up near the beach. I grew up in this weirdly unfinished place. We just had roads to nowhere. Hundreds of thousands of lots that people up north and all around the world owned but had never built on.
We called these streets grass faults. People would go out there to make out or race. We'd have parties in high school, or people would just throw trash onto these empty streets and these terrible roads. It looks like those old videos of like Fallout City, you know, where the Pentagon would drop H-bombs on these. 50s era mid-century modern developments and see what happened.
That's what a lot of Florida look like.
So, when I wrote this book, I wanted to write about the shenanigans of these land sales companies. I wanted to write about Glengarry Glen Ross in Florida. Mm-hmm. From about 55 to 75, these installment land sellers did about 2 billion in business. And that's in 1970s dollars, pre-oil crises, wild inflation.
Big, big bucks, 8, 9, 10 billion today, maybe more. Their companies, if not Fortune 500, were, you know, were New York Stock Exchange listed. These companies collectively owned. A couple million acres. They built cities.
They do it freestanding. Cities. Port St. Lucie, Palm Bay, Cape Coral, 2 million people live there. It'll be 4 million by the end of our lifetime.
Easy. These guys were empire builders. This was not a tiny business. In nineteen hundred, Florida had the same population as Baltimore. Huge stretches of Florida were swampy, unbuildable.
Uninhabitable, was filled with mosquitoes, people lived Along rivers, they lived in higher places. The beach property wasn't of great value. We didn't have the sense of relaxing and leisure time for northern workers. You worked until you died. You worked until you lived in a small room behind your children's house and they were working until they died.
The people who came to Florida in 1900 to relax were the super elite on trains and Pullman cars and stay in these opulent hotels and go tarpon fishing, right? The average Joe didn't come to Florida. You need DDT, you need pesticides, bedded road buildings, you need drainage, you need dredging and filling, all these modern techniques, and you need air conditioning. To truly bring the masses to Florida. But Florida really takes off after World War II.
Millions of GIs came home and they don't want to live with their parents in tenement housing. My father was the son of immigrants that came through Ellis Island, and he was a Marine during the Korean War. Didn't want to go back in a gritty mill town. He wanted to be. If not in the suburbs, then somewhere else, somewhere out.
When we talk about suburbs, we talk about Levittown. William Joseph Levitt was a CV during World War II. That's the construction brigade, the guys in the Navy, that would roll into Iwo Jima the day after the battle was over when they're cleaning up, and they would build huts and temporary housing for like 10,000 men. quickly. That Moved over into home building after World War II.
You know, millions of GIs came home. And so these builders using these post-World War II kind of mass production or prefab techniques. Found ways to buy, for example, a Levitown, a series of potato farms. I don't remember the acreage, but thousands of acres. You buy by the acre, you sell by the foot, you divide by the foot.
And you build small suburban lots for these people to move into. The idea was that you would. Drive into New York City, drive into Philadelphia, drive into Chicago from your suburban development.
Now Florida It had the same type of boom after World War II, and it did have suburbs in Tampa, in Orlando, in Miami, but Florida still didn't have a lot of people. It had a lot of land. And there were limits to suburban workers. White-collar workers, you know, think of Leave it to Beaver. There were limits in Tampa and Miami.
Florida didn't have a lot of industry or modern service-type industries. It was still very rural and very agricultural. And builders were trying to figure out. how to sell this land to people. Who can we breathe here?
Retirees. You know, not rich northerners. But trying to attract bus drivers and teachers, great men from the railroad, and former GIs that want to come to Florida. on fixed incomes and live. in these Small, generally, I say prefab, they weren't coming in trucks and dropping off a house.
I mean, you build what you can off-site and bring on. Or you build using assembly line techniques. You lay the slab, and then the crew lays another slab and another slab as far as you can see into the horizon. and then the framers come and then the roofers come. and on and on and on, and you do that as quickly as possible, as cheaply as possible.
to get these Retirees in Florida to move down. And so we see after World War II in the late 40s in Miami. Three developer brothers, the Mackle brothers, Frank, Robert, and Elliot Mackle. They were southern blue bloods. Their father was a builder from Atlanta who'd also built in Nashville and Birmingham.
They came from money, but they were. You know, I would say they had solid middle-class values. Their father was self-made, and I think their father knew. Boom and Bust. Two had served in World War II.
One was a construction brigade CB, so he also was similar to Levitt in Levittown, New York. Another brother got a deferment to build houses for the military.
So they knew how to build small houses and they knew the military. They knew what the military needed and they knew what the average man needed. Their father had built for the average man. He built big things, but he built tenements and a housing. Apartment complexes in Atlanta.
So the Maccles were the right guys in the right place at the right time. I'm dead. And you're listening to Jason Viewk, author of The Swamp Peddlers, telling the story of the men who built Florida, turning it from mostly an agricultural rural state. into a place, a refuge for seniors and retirees. More of this remarkable story.
Here on Our American Story. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country. Stories from our big cities and small towns. But we truly can't do this show without you.
If you love what you hear, go to ouramericanstories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go to ouramericanstories.com and give. The reviews and ratings are in, and Ice Cube's Big Three is the surprise hit of the summer. And to cap off the season, iHeart presents the Big Three Basketball Playoffs.
This Sunday at 3 p.m. Eastern, the remaining four teams battle it out for the right to make the Big Three Championship in the most physical, fierce, and competitive basketball league in the world. The action starts with the Big Three Monster Energy Celebrity Game, where your favorite stars compete in Big Three 3 on 3 basketball. Then, the first of two semifinal games features Dwight Howard and the LA Riot taking on Montrez Harrell and Dr. J's first-placed Chicago Tripletts.
The finale will see popular Miami 305 with stars MVP Michael Beasley, and last will make you Dan Stevenson take on Nancy Lieberman's Dallas Power, who finished the season winning five straight weeks to capture second place. Can Glenn Rice, Greg Monroe, and Paul Milsap stop Miami's physical assault, or will Miami and Beasley put an end to Dallas's winning ways? Who will make it to the Big Three Championship? This no-holds barred action starts Sunday at 3 p.m. Eastern, 12 Pacific.
only on CBS. Let's be real. Life happens. Kids spill. Pets shed.
And accidents are inevitable. Find a sofa that can keep up at washable sofas.com. Starting at just $699, our sofas are fully machine washable inside and out.
So you can say goodbye to stains and hello to worry-free living. Made with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics, they're kid-proof, pet-friendly, and built for everyday life. Plus, changeable fabric covers let you refresh your sofa whenever you want. Neat flexibility? Our modular design lets you rearrange your sofa anytime to fit your space, whether it's a growing family room or a cozy apartment.
Plus, they're earth-friendly and trusted by over 200,000 happy customers. It's time to upgrade to a stress-free, mess-proof sofa. Visit washablefas.com today and save. That's washablesofas.com. Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.
From Bitcoin believers to cautious first-timers, Kraken makes it easy to trade crypto in seconds. With over 350 tokens, tight spreads, and easy funding for your account with Plaid, PayPal, and Apple Pay, Kraken lets you trade, earn, and invest on your terms. Download Kraken today and get $10 in Bitcoin after your first trade of $10 or more. Just enter code iHeart10 under Add Invite Code when you sign up. Not investment advice.
Crypto trading involves risk of loss and is offered to U.S. customers through Payword, Interactive Inc. terms, and conditions apply. This is Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang from Los Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. JBL Tor Pro 3 earbuds are for those who don't conform to the standard.
Yeah, I mean, if you want to get into some touchscreen technology, how about the smart charging case, clear sound? These are not standard things. You're only going to get them with the JBL Tor Pro 3, baby. And I love the sound of JBL when it goes, Goombo. These earbuds are packed with innovation because you can't stand out by following others.
Touchscreen smart charging case for one touch control, instant EQ customization, true adaptive noise canceling, and the one-of-a-kind. Audio transmitter, which can plug and play with everything from game consoles to in-flight entertainment. The audio transmitter also allows for JBL Spatial 360 sound that takes any audio and turns it into a 360 immersive experience. What more could you want? First doesn't follow?
Grab a pair at JBL.com. Homes.com has collaboration tools to help home shoppers search, share, and discuss home shopping with family, friends, and their agent directly through the site. Though it was fun to get that email from your husband about that three-bedroom in the hills, to which you replied via text that you would never live in the hills and you'd like to find a three-bedroom closer to the beach. To which he replied, Why are you so uncompromising? A fun way to spend an afternoon, but we think it's just a tad bit easier our way.
Homes.com. We've done your homework. And we return to our American stories and the story of how Florida was sold and built. When we last left off, Jason Vuick, author of The Swamp Peddlers, was telling us about what Florida was like before World War II. It was swampy.
Hot. and had the same population as Baltimore. It would take a group of enterprising building brothers, the Mackle brothers, to see it all to its full potential. Let's return to the story. Florida is what people want it to be.
But definitely, you're talking about the weather. You're talking about the beaches, and you're talking to northerners from crowded cities, people who grew up in the Depression. people who knew want and it's got a lot of land. And it has a government that is willing to shamelessly sell itself and sell its land. at all times.
So Florida always had this This pulse. And so we see after World War II in the late forties in Miami. Three developer brothers, the Mackle brothers. They built, and not small, sizable, sometimes 1,200 houses here, 1,300 houses here. They built Port Charlotte, they built another one, Port St.
Lucie, Port Malabar, Deltona, Florida, Spring Hill, Florida. They were good at and they enjoyed. Having three and four and 5,000 acres and building, essentially building a city. They liked that. They found that it was fun for them.
They really did. They talked about it as urban planners, taking a virgin stretch of land, naming all of the streets. They built communities with so many streets. they had trouble finding names for them all. They go through every northern state, every northern city, every flower, every color, every month.
Then they'd name it for their kids, then they name it for their workers' kids, and on and on and on. And the Maccles were very good at using mass media, Madison Avenue ad campaign, think of Mad Men, you know, that era. Very good. And they weren't afraid to spend the money to get their name out there, to get their projects out there, not just locally, but nationally. The Maccols began advertising Florida land and these communities they were building.
in Life magazine, in popular mechanics. And Time, and you know, a Saturday Evening Post. They'd spend big money.
Some of the radio commercials were the Mackeles, big radio commercials, TV commercials. And one time, the story is they were selling in a development on the East Coast, I think it was at Pompano Beach, somewhere, but not on the beach. And they advertised it at You know, I forget what it was, and they were getting letters, thousands of letters. We'd love to come down, but we're in our 50s and we still have 10 years or so. You know, we still have a while to make it to Social Security or retirement.
My husband is older than me, but I still need to work, that kind of stuff. Is there any way we could put land on layaway? Is there any way, you know, what can we do to get a piece of the Florida Dream? We know land will go up. What can we do now?
Can we pay you some money? And they began to brainstorm. And they're sitting around their shared office in Miami, the Mackle Company. And one of the brothers, I think it was Elliot, said, Well, we got to sell him something. How about installments?
How about we sell land in installment plans? That we say you can have this lot. For $10 down and $10 a month over seven or eight years, you know, lots for about $800, $900. And we hook them that way. We'll sell them a Florida Dream, and one of the slogans was, for the price of cigarette money.
And that idea took hold. And think this is before Disney. This is before all of Florida's theme parks, before modern Miami Beach in the way we see it today, or the sports teams, all the different reasons people go to Florida. And people were so crazy for it. that the story is the Maccols received bushels full.
Cash. bushels full of letters. with coupons from their ads. Cut this coupon out, send us a check or a money order or $10, $1 bills, and we'll reserve your lot today. And it was sight unseen.
If you have a development, for example, in the middle of nowhere, 200,000 lots, 50,000 acres or so, whatever they were building, they would divide it and they would simply send a map of the project with a gridiron of streets, many of which hadn't been built yet. with an X. Like a treasure map. This is our lot. And so it seems so silly today.
You know, I always tell people: if I came home and told my wife I bought a lot in Wyoming, sight unseen, she would probably punch me. Idiot, why would you do that? But in 1958, Imagine what that meant to a bus driver. In Albany, New York, who had put in 32 years and he's just wanting to make it till he's 62 or 65. And the wife is a secretary at a high school.
They're just trying to make it. Kids are out of the house, they're finally gonna sell their home that they paid off, and they just want. their golden years in Florida. though they've probably never been, or maybe once or twice. Buying this piece of the Florida dream in installments was crazy.
but it hit. Maybe they weren't ever gonna come down. Maybe they were gonna build a home and rent it, whatever they were doing. People began buying land sight unseen in droves. These companies would sell land from kiosks in bus terminals.
kiosks in some of the main train terminals in the northeast. They would have girls, there's a picture in Life magazine: girls in bathing suits, not bikinis then, you know, this is still the 50s, with sand and playing volleyball and flirting with guys, GIs, and businessmen getting off the trains. And the sign says, Port Charlotte. $10 down and $10 a month. And so the Maccles, they weren't the first to do installment land sales.
But they were the first to do it on a mass-mass scale and using Kind of these Madison Avenue madmen advertising techniques. And other people began realizing. It's not rocket science. If you've got the money, if you have the ability to swing it, you can buy large stretches of land in Florida. It's hard to do today.
But in those days, there were large stretches. large ranches. Defunct orange groves, they used up the land and wanted to get rid of it.
Sometimes they didn't even pay taxes on it, and you could buy land in the 30s off the tax rolls for pennies an acre. but other people came down. Buying 5,000 here, 10,000 here. including two brothers from Baltimore and they were different. The Mackles were blue bloods, they were builders, they were Rotarians, shriners, that kind of stuff.
They were their community guys. To Came from a family of builders. They prided themselves as being members of the Mackel Company. We build things. The Rosens Were mail order guys.
They were former carnival barkers, you know, as kids in Baltimore, step right up, that kind of stuff. And they were salesmen, and they would sell stuff on. COD. They would sell stuff in installments. you know, on layaway, television sets.
Refrigerators, things like that. They were brawlers. They were tough Jewish kids who knew want. who had made their way in the world by hook or crook. And they had built a successful business.
And their business that really made it was selling shampoo. It was called Formula Number Nine. I remember Formula, I don't know how or why. But this was a shampoo that you bought in magazines. that they sold you and they promised that it would rejuvenate your hair, that it was, you know, lanolin from sheep.
I read it was lanolin mixed with hotel shampoo in a bathtub, which they would bottle up and sell for a dollar a bottle. They sold other things through magazines and through some of the first infomercials. After TV would go off, after the news in America, you know, generally 11:30, news would go off, TV would go off.
So you could buy 30 minutes and show whatever you wanted in the middle of the night. and they would press their sales teams. That went around the eastern seaboard selling things. You know, sell, sell, sell. And if you weren't good, you were fired.
I think of these guys as straight out of Glen Gary Glen Ross, you know, the famous movie on land sales with Jack Lemon and Al Pacino and Al Alec Baldwin. It was a stage play. You know, very intense salesman. There are suckers everywhere. And if you know, I'm paraphrasing in one of the Rosen said: if you're not willing to take them, then someone else will take them.
So get out, get out of here. If you're not willing to take that sucker, that buyer, to scam that buyer, I'll find someone who will. These guys were survivors. And so they came to Florida. during the boom in the 50s and they heard there's money there.
You know, they always had a nose. for what was going on. And looked around and they thought, why are we selling shampoo at a dollar a bottle? when we could be selling lots at a thousand a lot. And you've been listening to Jason Viewick.
Author of The Swamp Peddlers tell one heck of a story about how Florida was built and sold. And my goodness, what salesman? These guys were, these two families, the Rosens and the Maccles. The Maccles, sort of the bluebroad construction guys. They've been doing construction forever.
Rotary guys, communitarians, real members of the community. And here are the Rosens hustlers, guys who sold mail-order catalogs and did, well, almost anything for a buck. More of this remarkable story, the story of how Florida was sold and built. here on Our American Story. The review is in Ratings are in, and Ice Cube's Big Three is the surprise hit of the summer.
And to cap off the season, iHeart presents the Big Three Basketball Playoffs. This Sunday at 3 p.m. Eastern, the remaining four teams battle it out for the right to make the Big Three Championship in the most physical, fierce, and competitive basketball league in the world. The action starts with the Big Three Monster Energy Celebrity Game, where your favorite stars compete in Big Three 3 on 3 basketball. Then, the first of two semifinal games features Dwight Howard and the LA Riot taking on Montrez Harrell and Dr.
J's first-placed Chicago Triplets. The finale will see popular Miami 305 with stars MVP Michael Beasley, and last will make you Dan Stevenson take on Nancy Lieberman's Dallas Power, who finished the season winning five straight weeks to capture second place. Can Glenn Rice, Craig Monroe, and Paul Milsap stop Miami's physical assault, or will Miami and Beasley put an end to Dallas's winning ways? Who will make it to the Big Three Championship? This no-holds-bought action starts Sunday at 3 p.m.
Eastern, 12 Pacific, only on CBS. Uh Let's be real. Life happens. Kids spill. Pets shed.
And accidents are inevitable. Find a sofa that can keep up at washablesofas.com. Starting at just $699, our sofas are fully machine washable inside and out.
So you can say goodbye to stains and hello to worry-free living. Made with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics. They're kid-proof, pet-friendly, and built for everyday life. Plus, changeable fabric covers let you refresh your sofa whenever you want. Neat flexibility?
Our modular design lets you rearrange your sofa anytime to fit your space, whether it's a growing family room or a cozy apartment. Plus, they're earth-friendly and trusted by over 200,000 happy customers. It's time to upgrade to a stress-free, mess-proof sofa. Visit washablefas.com today and save. That's washablefas.com.
Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. My finance guy's like, you know, we talk every day about stocks. We should just shut up and bought Bitcoin. Just shut up and bought Bitcoin, forget everything else, and bank. I have all my crypto on Kraken.
Dave Portnoy trusts Kraken with his crypto.
So do millions of clients around the world. Download the app today. Get $10 in Bitcoin after your first trade of $10 or more. Just enter code iHeart10 under Ad Invite Code when you sign up. Not investment advice.
Crypto trading involves risk of loss and is offered to U.S. customers through Payward Interactive Inc. Terms and Conditions Apply. This is Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang from Los Culturalistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. JBL Tor Pro 3 earbuds are for those who don't conform to the standard.
Yeah, I mean, if you want to get into some touchscreen technology, how about the smart charging case, clear sound? These are not standard things. You're only going to get them with a JBL Tor Pro 3 baby. And I love the sound of JBL when it goes, Goombo. These earbuds are packed with innovation because you can't stand out by following others.
Touchscreen smart charging case. For one-touch control, instant EQ customization, true adaptive noise canceling, and the one-of-a-kind audio transmitter, which can plug and play with everything from game consoles to in-flight entertainment. The audio transmitter also allows for JBL Spatial 360 sound that takes any audio and turns it into a 360 immersive experience. What more could you want? Verse doesn't follow.
Grab a pair at jbl.com. Homes.com is the only place where you can find specialized neighborhood guides with the in-depth insider info home shoppers want. Very in-depth info. Want to know if there's homes for sale in the area? We've got it.
How long has a home been on the market? We'll know it. Average lot size? Uh-huh. Proximity to local parks?
Of course. Insight into your neighbor's divorce? We're working on it. Homes are coming. We've done your homework.
And we return to our American stories and the final portion of our story on who sold and built Florida with Jason Viewick, author of The Swamp Peddlers. When we last left off, the Mackle brothers had decided to start selling empty lots to Northerners for the price of cigarette money. The concept was a hit, and soon other people were interested in getting in on the game, including two former Carnival Barkers from Maryland. The Rosen Brothers. Let's return to the story.
Yeah. They came to Fort Myers and there's a story of them flying and one of the brothers is flying in a Cessna, a small plane, and he looks down at Redfish Point on the Calusahatchie River and he decides that's a perfect place for my future community. Cape Coral, he had no knowledge of building. He never built anything. He had no knowledge of how to sell land or how to start a land sales community.
But once he got the hang of it, he knew how to sell things. Jack Rosen handled the books, Leonard Rosen handled the sales, and so he kind of aped the Maccles. He did what the Maccles did with the national media. But then he took it to another level. And so you see the Rosens have the first call centers in the US, calling millions of people a year.
Thousands of sales dinners randomly been chosen out of the phone book in Gary, Indiana. You know, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, you've been cordially invited to a film and steak dinner at the Holiday Inn in South Bend this Saturday, and you'd go and you'd get worked over, right? They'd go door to door.
And then, once you'd been sold to, they'd sell to your family. In Fort Myers, the Rosens. extended the airport at Page Field and brought in real jets. And there were daily flights, one in the morning and one in the evening, to New York City. They began bringing in television shows.
Route 66 comes through Southwest Florida. He gives Bob Hope some sort of award, like the first annual Great American Award, and there's no second annual award, right? He brings in, you know, the American Stamp Club convention, and he brings in, you know, if there had been Beanie Babies then, he would have had the Beanie Baby Convention in Cape Coral, which he would then use this event, you know, chess tournaments and track and deal. You know, you name it. He would bring it in and then he would sell land through those.
They were just incredible salesmen. and they became bitter, bitter rivals to the Macles.
Now, what the Rosens would do though is they would skirt the line between reputable land dealers. and fraudulent peddlers of swamps. By law, if you're selling land and installments, selling lots as residential property in Florida in the 50s, you had to connect that lot to a paved road.
So you've got to bring in millions of tons of dirt. You've got to dredge and fill. You've got to dig ditches.
So you're looking at an incredible amount of heavy work. using big machinery with engineers who know what they're doing, grading the land. Over miles. And if you get behind on that, or prices rise, or inflation is off the hook, that $10 down isn't that good a deal for you anymore. And so the Rosens saw that they were on the hook sometime in the 60s, and I forget the number now, but it was like $90 million.
They were making big money. They almost bought. The franchise that became the Miami Dolphins. They had the best art collection in all of Florida, which was, they called their company the Gulf American Corporation. And of course, you would go see the Gulf American collection in Miami.
And then when you'd walk in the door, a salesman would start selling you lots. They realize that we're 90 million on the hook.
So if we're spending money and we're living freely and we're screwing around, that eventually the rubber is going to meet the road. We have to provide what we promised or it's a crime. Fraud.
So Leonard Rosen gets the idea, why don't we just go out into real swampland and sell people investment property? And I'm putting that word in quotes, right? Investment property. Tell them that in the fine print, but also openly say: you know, we're not promising you anything, we're not promising you a road here. This is not a homestead.
Let our lawyers read this, put it all in the contracts. And we'll sell land for $250, $500, $1,000 an acre as investment property. And we'll let our salesman. Lie through their teeth. You know, this is a future suburb, this is a future city.
We're going to let our salesmen run with this. And we're going to let people think what they want, make people think this is the future when it's not. It's just unusable land. And so this is where the Rosens make a lot of money, but also get into trouble and where they start to kind of destroy the image of installment land sales. I tell people in Port Charlotte, you know, maybe it wasn't the best community, but no one ever got ripped off.
They got what they paid for. But when the Rosens are selling to people who think You know, they're uneducated, they've been. worked over through salesmen. who almost like in a Darwinian process have been weeded out to be the best ones. And oftentimes the best salesmen were the most unscrupulous ones.
They had the Midas touch and the golden tongue, and they'd work over these people. and sell them land that they thought that they were going to move to and live on. They take them on tours in the winter when there was no rain.
So you could go into Golden Gate estates and drive around and, oh, someday, you know. Golden Gate, the community in Naples back here, these are booming places, you know, and in 20 years, this. five acres you just purchased is going to be worth a lot of money, which was patently untrue. And so this is where the federal government starts to get involved. Northern politicians are already angry they're losing their old people to Florida.
You know, Detroit is paying out its pensions and it's not coming back to Michigan ever. They're already tired of these salesmen. But now... their former residents are calling and saying, hey, I got ripped off, and they're using telephones and they're using the mails to do it.
So the federal government starts to have hearings and the Rosens come off as criminals. which is arguable, but certainly they're they're doing unscrupulous things. As opposed to the Maccles. The Maccles are willing to testify, and the reps and senators praise them, and the Rosens are unwilling to testify, and they come off as criminals. The Rosens and the Maccles didn't like each other, they knew each other.
The Maccles and the Rosens belong to the Florida Land Sales Board. It was a board that was totally made up of five people that were supposed to oversee. how the advertisements were pitched before you put it in Time magazine. or in the New York Times to give you a check mark that you're not lying. But they're really not gonna look over it.
It had a small budget and all five members of the board were land developers themselves. The tension there is between the Maccles and the Rosens. Over control of this board because the Mackles want to clean it up enough to where they can do business, and the Rosens want. Few, if any, restrictions at all, so they can continue to do business. And they essentially go to war.
They go to war and they go to war in Tallahassee specifically. trying to get a governor in place that will strengthen the board. and start to turn over evidence to district attorneys. Eventually, the Macauls kind of won out. Claude Kirk was the first Florida Republican governor since Reconstruction, and Kirk.
Wanted to save the Florida environment, and that meant reining in these installment land sales developers who were willing to build on islands, for example. Eventually, the Rosens are kind of run out of the business. The governor threatened to turn over his records from the land sales board. Two various district attorneys. And so they were facing possibly thousands of felonies.
And they could have gone to prison, so they sold out to another company in the early 1970s and moved away from Florida. One brother died. And I think the other one moved to Las Vegas and and began working in land development out there. These guys Are forgotten, the Rosens and the Mackels, but they are every bit as important in Florida history as people like Plant or Flagler. The Mackles should be right up there.
I mean, they built entire cities, entire cities from scratch. They employed tens of thousands of people and, you know, created an entire new landscaping for the state. and brought probably hundreds, if not thousands, if not millions of people to Florida and changed Florida's environment forevermore. I would say, and I have no way of quantifying this, but who sold Florida? You know, who sold Florida before Disney?
Before any of the tourism, before the pro teams and all the people moving down, these companies did. And a terrific job on the production and storytelling by Monty Montgomery. And a special thanks to Jason Buick. Author of The Swamp Peddlers, and what a story we heard: the men who built and sold. Florida.
And my goodness, two very different approaches, the hustlers, the Rosens, and the solid guys, the Mackles, trying to do it right. The battle on the board, I would have loved to have been in on those board meetings. The story of how Florida was built and sold here on Our American Story. Tired of spills and stains on your sofa? Washablesofas.com has your back, featuring the Anibay collection, the only designer sofa that's machine-washable inside and out, where designer quality meets budget-friendly prices.
That's right, sofas started just $699. Enjoy a no-risk experience with pet-friendly, stain-resistant, and changeable slip covers made with performance fabrics. Experience cloud-like comfort with high-resilience foam that's hypoallergenic and never needs fluffing. The sturdy steel frame ensures longevity, and the modular pieces can be rearranged anytime. Check out washable sofas.com and get up to 60% off your Anibay sofa, backed by a 30-day satisfaction guarantee.
If you're not absolutely in love, send it back for a full refund. No return chipping or restocking fees, every penny back. Upgrade now at washablesofas.com. Offers are subject to change, and certain restrictions may apply. iHeart presents the Big Three Playoffs.
This Sunday, the remaining four teams battle to make their championship in the most physical, fierce, and competitive basketball league in the world. The action starts with the Big Three Monster Energy Celebrity Game. Then Dwight Howard and his LA Ryan take on Montrez Harrell and Dr. J Chicago Triplets. The finale will see popular Miami 305 with stars MVP Michael Beasley and Len Stevenson take on Nancy Lieberman's Dallas Power.
Who will make it to the Big Three Championship? The no-holds ball action starts Sunday at 3 p.m. Eastern, 12 Pacific, only on CDS. The day begins at the Chase Sapphire Lounge by the club at Boston Logan Airport. You get the clam chowder.
In San Diego, it's Tostadas. New York, Espresso Martini. It's 10 a.m. Why not? It's the quiet before your next flight, the shower that resets your day, the menu that lets you know where you are.
This is access to over 1,300 airport lounges and every Sapphire lounge by the club. And one card that gets you in: Chase Sapphire Reserve, the most rewarding card. Learn more at chase.com/slash Sapphire Reserve. Cards issued by J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, NA member FDIC, subject to credit.
approval. Hold up, we got one play. Everything we work for comes down to this. Quick question. Speaking of workouts, how would you rate your athletic program?
Bro, we're in the middle of the state championship. Oh, so like a B plus then? Dude, get out of our huddle.
Well, at homes.com, we leave it all on the field to get you detailed information on local schools. Off the field! Off the field. Copy. All right, go sports.
How'd he even get in here? Homes.com. We've done your homework. Looking to buy your first car or home? Understanding your FICO score is key to achieving your life goals.
Knowing your FICO scores helps you apply for loans with confidence and avoid surprises. With MyFICO, you get access to your FICO score, credit reports, 24-7 monitoring, and alerts on the go. Take the mystery out of your score and get your FICO score for free today. Visit myfICO.com/slash free. That's myfico.com/slash free and discover the score lenders use most.
This is an iHeart Podcast.
