Encompassing a broad and fertile expanse between the east and west coasts, most of central Florida was farming country when vacation-mania first struck the beachside strips. From the 1970s on, this picture of tranquility was shattered: no section of the state has been affected more dramatically by modern tourism, and the most visited part of Florida can also be one of the ugliest. A clutter of freeway interchanges, motels and billboards arches around the small city of Orlando , where a tourist-dollar chase of Gold Rush magnitude was sparked by Walt Disney World , the biggest and cleverest theme-park complex ever created. The rest of central Florida is quiet by comparison, and, north of Orlando particularly, rural towns like Ocala typify the state before the arrival of the highways and of vacations spun around "attractions."

Central Florida

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