By the summer of 1926 the
speculative bubble in Florida real
estate had already begun to burst.
Northern newspapers, previously
favorable to Florida development,
began to print negative articles. An
unseasonably cold winter in 1925-26
deflated the myth of Florida as a
semi-tropical Eden, and the deadly
hurricane of 1926, which caused
massive property damage, settled
the matter. By 1927 Florida entered
a period of statewide economic collapse,
exacerbated by canker damage
to the orange crop of 1927 and
another devastating hurricane in
1928. Nationally, the stock market
crash followed, in 1929, and ushered
in the years of the Great Depression.