By Myla Wasser
During my time at the George A. Smathers Library, I’ve worked extensively with the Florida Ephemera Collection. For each piece of ephemera I determined the genre, wrote and abstract with relevant keywords, and added the date of publication. In total, I have worked with 2,183 pieces of ephemera, spanning brochures, postcards, viewbooks, guides, and even restaurant menus. One challenging task revolved around finding out when a piece of ephemera was published and I used a variety of methods to estimate a 5–10-year range for undated items.
By far the easiest method of dating ephemera is to see if the date is directly stated. Sometimes a date will appear on the cover, other times it will appear on the back. Maps often have a date on them in the corner, or near the map key. Copyright also conveys the publication date. However, dates can also appear in other places, so it is usually a good idea to look over each item carefully. For example, an easy way to date an item is through statistics, such as population statistics. Some brochures will mention either the current population or how much the population has grown. Since census data is widely available, these statistics can be useful for determining the approximate year an item came out.
However, information in ephemera is not always accurate. I have encountered instances where, after double-checking other methods of dating items, I found that the listed population is exaggerated. Ultimately, much of the ephemera I worked with was designed to encourage investment and spending. As a result, it is sometimes inaccurate. To use another example, some attractions and hotels will have their names changed. However, this may not be immediately reflected in materials produced shortly after the name change.
Some ephemera can be dated via implied dates as well. For example, sometimes a bit of text will mention something “new.” These new items can be a new building, landmark, remodeling, or even a newly added commodity, like air conditioning, color TV, or free parking. Determining how new something is can be a little difficult, so it may be good to use other strategies alongside this one. Statistics can be helpful here as well. For example, if a leaflet describes a recent $1,000,000 renovation, there’s a chance a local newspaper wrote about said renovation when it began or concluded. Sometimes even Wikipedia will offer dates of renovations. However, as always, double check the source if you are using Wikipedia. There is always a chance that people are mistaken in the information they share online. Local news outlets are typically the most reliable.
Another strategy is to start a guide of when certain places opened, closed, burned down and reconstructed, or changed names. We created such a guide for Florida, listing useful dates. For example, the following list provides the opening or closing dates of various Florida attractions and tourist-related organizations:
- AAA (“triple A”) was founded in 1902.
- Musa Isle Indian Village was opened as a tourist attraction in 1907 (and closed in the late 1960s).
- Silver Springs – Glass bottom boat tours began as early as the 1870s. The theme park was opened in the 1920s.
- Coral Gables Biltmore Hotel opened in 1926.
- Bok Tower opened in 1929.
- Cypress Gardens opened in 1936.
- McKee Jungle Gardens opened in 1932.
- Monkey and Parrot Jungle opened in 1933 and 1936, respectively.
- Everglades Wonder Gardens opened in 1936.
- Ringling Museum opened as a private museum in 1936, and was turned over to the state in 1946.
- Marineland opened in 1937.
- Jacksonville Oriental Gardens opened in 1937 and closed in 1954.
- Marine Studios opened in 1938.
- Mead Botanical Garden opened in 1940.
- Fort Marion was renamed Castillo de San Marcos in 1942.
- Everglades National Park was authorized in 1934 and officially dedicated in 1947.
- Edison Home opened 1947.
- Weeki Wachee opened in 1947.
- Lightner Museum opened in 1948 (but had previously been Hotel Alcazar from 1887-1946). Also Potter’s Wax Museum opened the same year.
- Ripley’s Believe It or Not opened in 1950.
- Horn’s Cars of Yesterday opened in 1953.
- Miami Seaquarium opened in 1955.
- Citrus Tower opened in 1956.
- Busch Gardens opened in 1959.
- Lion Country Safari and Pirate Work opened in 1967. Pirate World closed in 1975.
- Kennedy Space Center opened in 1968.
- Disney World opened in 1971.
- Sea World opened 1973.
- Circus World opened in 1974.
- Universal Studios opened in 1990.
Attractions and maps provide another means of finding ephemera, depicting nearby locations with known opening dates. Attractions are the easiest of these to find, since there is normally a large swath of information about them. Disney World has a definitive opening date, and even smaller attractions like Marineland can be clearly dated. However, if no nearby attractions are listed, most ephemera will include a map of some kind. Said maps often include surrounding locations or local hot spots. So even if Marineland is not mentioned, a local restaurant in the same area may be. Restaurants and hotels are both very useful in this regard, as local newspapers tend to report on their closing and opening dates. Using multiple locations can date a piece of ephemera to the decade. For example, Marineland opened in 1937. Any map mentioning Marineland can safely be said to have been made after that year, but that still leaves nearly 90 years of potential dates, so other features would need to be dated. Roads can be helpful with this as well. Highways and bridges tend to have easily-found dates, but if the item you are looking at was made in the first half of the 20th century, smaller roads can be quite useful as well. Other useful locations are government buildings, schools, hospitals, hotels, and restaurants.
The final method I used to date ephemera is product design. This applies to cars, clothes, and even the architectural style of buildings. For Florida, bathing suit and umbrella designs are also useful, as are art movements like Art Deco and Art Nouveau, which often influenced the look of brochures. In the case of the Ephemera Collection, I have used the design of cars. While I am not particularly knowledgeable about how cars have changed over time, Special Collections archivists have compiled a list on that subject, identifying what to look for in different images of cars.
Overall, the best way to date ephemera is to create lists of any potentially helpful details. This can include open and close dates of attractions, dates of name changes, and even changes in product design over time. Any concrete dates will be incredibly useful to you and any potential future researchers looking at the ephemera you worked with.