America 250: The Florida Edition | The Florida Freedom Tour

[00:00:00]Good morning from Daytona Beach, Florida.

[00:00:03]This Jackie Robinson Ballpark off in the distance home of the Daytona Tortugas.

[00:00:07]We're not going to the Tortugas today, but in the parking lot of the Daytona Tortugas is Florida's traveling America 250 trailer presentation demonstration. And so we've covered the America 250 official traveling presentation that has taken place across state fairs in multiple states hitting all 50 states during 2026. We did that during the Florida State Fair going back I think like February time period. This is supposed to be a little bit different.

[00:00:41]This is celebrating Florida supposedly as the 14th colony and obviously there's no 14 colonies. Florida actually was the 27th state uh for the United States. Became a state in 1845 nearly 60 years after the United States was formed. They really didn't advertise this as a traveling display at all. And it only popped up on like the Daytona Tortugas social media pages I think twice over the last couple of weeks.

[00:01:11]It's the Florida Freedom Tour.

[00:01:15]Check it out.

[00:01:24]All right, so this starts [music] in this truck and exits and enters into the other truck.

[00:01:30]We're going in.

[00:01:36]Oh.

[00:01:37]This is Ponce a 14th century.

[00:01:43]>> Yeah.

[00:01:46]>> Yeah, Ponce de León April 1513.

[00:01:50]You can see a whole bunch of Ponce de León information up in St. Augustine.

[00:01:55]European exploration and colonization.

[00:01:59]>> That is nice.

[00:02:04]British privateer Sir Francis Drake burned St. Augustine in 1586 as part of his campaign against Spanish colonies in America. And on several occasions Castillo de San Marcos effectively stopped attempts to seize the city.

[00:02:19]Which we've seen many times. We actually done a bunch of different videos up there around Castillo de San Marcos. And in 1693, King Charles of Spain issued a royal decree offering freedom to enslaved people who escaped British colonies and sought refuge in Florida.

[00:02:35]I love this painting because I just saw recently where, you know, like major oil trafficking ships and, you know, out in the great oceans and people debating like, "How do you think those wooden ships could have possibly have made it here from Europe over time?" And there's like be like the next big conspiracy theory saying like, "These people never made it here." But obviously we're here.

[00:03:01]So.

[00:03:03]Here's some items here.

[00:03:08]This silver bar is just a reproduction.

[00:03:12]As well as this. This is the gold puddle ingot.

[00:03:15]Reproduction. And you've got a flintlock pistol. This is also a reproduction.

[00:03:21]It's a sword hilt.

[00:03:23]And a cocoa tray.

[00:03:24]This is an iron swivel gun cannon.

[00:03:36]And we're still 1500s to 1800s here.

[00:03:41]European colonization Those are glass trade beads from the 1800s.

[00:03:52]And this is a bayonet reproduction of 1700s.

[00:03:58]Inkwell reproduction.

[00:04:01]Some mocha ware ceramic shard.

[00:04:06]And then we've moved up to British Florida, 1763 to 1783.

[00:04:12]And we've got a whole bunch of items here, too.

[00:04:15]We've got buttons.

[00:04:18]More reproductions.

[00:04:21]A smoking pipe.

[00:04:25]Flintlock pistol firing mechanism.

[00:04:30]Flintlock pistol.

[00:04:35]There's a powder horn.

[00:04:37]This actually looks like it's real.

[00:04:51]Here is the territorial period and early statehood.

[00:04:55]It's interesting.

[00:04:56]You can see you have Like I said before, Florida achieved statehood 1845, the 27th state.

[00:05:01]But during the 1860 presidential election Lincoln didn't even appear on the Florida ballots, but he still won the national election.

[00:05:11]Andrew Jackson returned to Florida in 1821 to establish new government in the territory of Florida.

[00:05:22]And then Florida booms, 1885 to 1941 for agriculture.

[00:05:28]Citrus groves past the freeze in the 1880s.

[00:05:34]And the Cuesta-Rey Cigar Company in Tampa 1925. Something interesting, this is a hand-colored postcard.

[00:05:42]Uh these are Bok Tower items here.

[00:05:47]And that's Calvin Coolidge uh with Grace Coolidge and Mr. and Mrs. Edward Bok. So, we've been to Bok Tower before, too, and covered that on the channel.

[00:05:57]And then we get into the cracker cowboys here, 1890s, cattle culture.

[00:06:06]Heading into the Civil War, Florida provided an estimated 15,000 troops to the Confederacy.

[00:06:16]2,000 Floridians, black and white, served in the Union Army.

[00:06:21]It's interesting cuz you would only think that troops here would be Confederate.

[00:06:28]Kind of dispels that a little bit.

[00:06:34]Here's Josiah T. Walls, Florida's first black congress member, 1871.

[00:06:42]Over here we have a Confederate canteen.

[00:06:45]This is a reproduction. Check it out, it's made out of wood.

[00:06:51]This is from Escambia County brand book.

[00:06:54]That's also a reproduction.

[00:06:57]1823 to 1890.

[00:06:59]Here's a bullet mold, reproduction, 1870s to 1880s.

[00:07:07]And a powder flask.

[00:07:11]And more buttons and pins.

[00:07:14]Back in Florida booms, Florida's economic bubble burst in 1926 because of hurricanes damaging the economy.

[00:07:24]Women's clubs took on larger civic roles. Here is Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune.

[00:07:30]We were just at Bethune-Cookman University last week at their football stadium.

[00:07:38]South State brand, Winter Haven.

[00:07:41]And we're going down.

[00:07:45]Heading into the second trailer.

[00:07:49]Got a video package here for the Florida Turnpike.

[00:07:52]Check it out.

[00:07:53]Being built in 1960.

[00:08:01]Florida's lunch not lunch pad, but rather launch pad to new frontiers. Maybe I need lunch.

[00:08:11]In the 2010s, Florida surpassed New York to become the nation's third most populous state.

[00:08:16]That's crazy.

[00:08:18]Record numbers of tourists visit each year experience the Florida dream.

[00:08:22]Few world famous attractions, rich historical sites, and diverse natural habitats.

[00:08:31]America's playground here.

[00:08:34]Check it out. We got Weeki Wachee over here and Fort in St. Augustine.

[00:08:40]Cypress Gardens.

[00:08:42]This looks like Busch Gardens up here.

[00:08:45]Gatorland up above.

[00:08:48]Love me some Gatorland.

[00:08:52]Surfboard.

[00:08:55]See, this picture is funny. I would swear that this is Weeki Wachee, but the sign refers to Silver Springs here, which is not too far away from there, but I was not aware of them doing mermaid shows.

[00:09:08]I wonder.

[00:09:10]You have manatees and wild cats.

[00:09:16]This is perfect.

[00:09:19]Souvenir stand.

[00:09:23]God, dude. If you visit Florida and you don't get a little gator head, I mean, did you really visit Florida?

[00:09:34]The Everglades.

[00:09:44]The American alligator.

[00:09:47]Kumquats, baby.

[00:09:51]All the way from Florida.

[00:09:57]And then we move on to America's citrus.

[00:10:00]Look at the welcome station even back in like the '50s and '60s. They were giving out free orange juice.

[00:10:06]A staple of the welcome stations today when you're crossing over that border from Georgia.

[00:10:13]The Gulf Coast Scenic Highway along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

[00:10:22]Before the 1870s, Florida had few roads or railroads.

[00:10:27]So, railroad system. And we've talked about the railroads here extensively on the channel in the past.

[00:10:35]Got a bunch of bait. Got the bait shop over here because of Florida's sport fishing capital of the world.

[00:10:44]That is something that we have not done yet. Like we've gone small fishing here, but not deep sea fishing. And I would very much like to do that in the future.

[00:10:55]It's Rico holding the creature's head here.

[00:10:59]And there it is.

[00:11:02]Oh my god.

[00:11:05]Post-war growth.

[00:11:06]Florida buys for victory.

[00:11:11]But yeah, dude. I This head is a mask. It's a reproduction. We've seen like the actual at Silver Springs before. You can go to Silver Springs. It's over towards Ocala.

[00:11:24]Great experience. They have glass bottom boats over there, too, to be able to see where they filmed The Creature from the Black Lagoon. And then we saw where they filmed one of the sequels uh last year up in Marineland up towards like St. Augustine area.

[00:11:38]Also fantastic place to go visit. I remember these.

[00:11:44]So, that's a promotional radio.

[00:11:47]And here's the thing that you would stick into the orange so that you can tap in and get some juice out of it.

[00:11:54]Man on the Moon.

[00:11:56]Can you believe?

[00:11:59]The Truman Show.

[00:12:00]And the reason why The Truman Show is here is cuz that was filmed uh in Seaside, a community in Walton County.

[00:12:07]Dog tags from the Korean War and a World War II canteen and blackout bulb.

[00:12:12]The Free State of Florida in the 20th Century.

[00:12:16]That is in Panama City.

[00:12:22]There is no crying in baseball.

[00:12:24]And check this out.

[00:12:27]Become a nurse. Your country needs you.

[00:12:30]I don't know.

[00:12:32]This poster kind of ties back to New York a little bit more, I think.

[00:12:39]Citrus bomber fleet.

[00:12:41]And we've seen it all and we've taken you guys along to see it all.

[00:12:46]All right, so that was kind of neat. Um brief, neat.

[00:12:51]The trailers that we saw at the fairgrounds around the entire history of the country much more complete and I think more well-driven.

[00:13:01]But this is nice. This is the first stop they said in region five of the state, which kind of goes up towards where it starts, yeah, starts down like Yeehaw, goes up to Flagler and so forth. So, it's making stops every single day in the state. It's free.

[00:13:18]And while I say free and we look at Freedom State and everything, I'm sure every time that we do anything about America 250 or the country or anything else at this point it draws some type of criticism or negative comments.

[00:13:34]Instead of celebrating the country or state or anything as a whole we've broken everything down into left versus right, them versus us, and so on and so forth.

[00:13:47]This is the 250th celebration of the country existing.

[00:13:51]I love this country.

[00:13:53]There is no disputing that.

[00:13:55]Are there things in this country that can be fixed? Of course.

[00:13:59]But America is the land of opportunity and it's the land of never-ending promises and chances to do things and make things bigger and better than they were before.

[00:14:09]This isn't meant to be a long-winded political rant or speech.

[00:14:15]I would just love for people to come together. I remember when I was a kid very young kid in 1976 when we had the 200th celebration of the country.

[00:14:25]>> Yes.

[00:14:26]>> And >> It was amazing.

[00:14:27]>> It wasn't well, I hate Gerald Ford because of this and I hate because of that and so forth.

[00:14:34]It really was just an overall gathering of neighbors and, you know, barbecues, picnics, people getting together and celebrating, right? Like that's what this is supposed to be.

[00:14:45]A giant celebration of the country.

[00:14:48]There's a long list of empires that have failed well before 250 years and be it as it may with however you you know, enjoy or don't enjoy or like the political climate what it is today.

[00:15:00]Again, going back to the land of opportunity, if you don't like something in this country you should go ahead and fix something in this country. It's not a thing of just angry tweeting about things or posting on social media. That doesn't affect change. That just affects a group of mob people voicing dissatisfaction and gathering people that are angry about something.

[00:15:22]In order to do something, you need to mobilize and actually do something.

[00:15:25]Without getting into a tremendous amount of detail, um I am a politically independent. Over the years, it's been many years, I was a lot more involved in politics on both sides. And it's funny because there are times that like in videos like I call out and somebody would say like you're Trump supporter or on the flip side somebody would say like you're a liberal. I'm down the middle. I am country first, politics second. Any chance that I would have to actually promote or to advocate for somebody that I feel is going to do something better, whether it's local government or national government, I'd take that opportunity to do so. So while there's a chunk of people that are unhappy today with today's political climate, take a look around at America 250, celebrate what we've done as a country, put the effort into trying to make things better for the future. That's my biggest soapbox that I'm ever going to have on this channel, so guys can completely thumbs down if you want, but again, I love this country. I love that they're having these celebrations and you're able to go out and they're mobilizing different things to be able to go and interact with uh different experiences so that you can experience the history as well as being able to just see it in a textbook. I don't even know how much textbooks are used in school anymore.

[00:16:45]On that note, I'm going to get out of here. So thank you very much for coming along. Thank you very much for all of your likes, comments, and subscriptions.

[00:16:51]Treat others the way you want to be treated. Have a great day. See you guys.