The Mermaids at Weeki Watchi Springs have been a Florida attraction since the 1940s.
For those who don't know, I live in a converted campervan and travel around the country, posting photo diaries of places that I visit. I am currently wintering in Florida.
In 1947, a Hollywood underwater stunt coordinator named Newt Perry purchased a lot of land in Florida around the Weeki Watchi Spring, a freshwater artesian well. The spring fed over a hundred million gallons a day into the Weeki Watchi River, which meanders for 12 miles before emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. At its source the spring had spots that were over 400 feet deep, and the locals had been using it to dump everything from broken refrigerators to stolen cars. It took several months for Perry to clear out all the junk.
At this time, the swimmer Esther Williams was a box-office hit, and Perry, with his movie biz connections, figured he could turn the crystal-clear spring into a nice filming location. He was right, and over the next several decades a wide variety of films and TV shows would be shot here, the first being Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid, made in 1948. When Warner Brothers finished its live action/animated Don Knotts film The Incredible Mr Limpet in 1962, it premiered the movie at Weeki Watchie’s theater, on an underwater screen, as a publicity stunt.
But Perry had an idea for a tourist attraction, too. At this time, the tourist boom in Florida was just beginning to flower, and well-off people from the north flocked to the Sunshine State each winter. Perry’s spring was located right alongside Highway 19, one of the main routes to Tampa Bay.
An avid scuba diver, Perry had worked out a system in which he was able to breathe underwater, without a scuba tank, using a hose through which air was pumped. Thinking quickly, he taught some of the local teenage girls how to use this breathing apparatus, trained them to hold their breath and perform underwater, then constructed a tiny underwater viewing area that looked through a glass wall out into the spring waters. He billed his performers as “Weeki Watchi Mermaids”. The first show was in October 1947.
At first, the “mermaids” wore ordinary one-piece swimsuits and diving fins, and performed underwater acrobatics and ballet as well as tricks like eating a banana or drinking a Coke underwater. As time went on, the shows got more complex. The “mermaids” began doing carefully staged stories, and they adopted their one-piece lycra “tails” as part of the costume. Perry expanded his 18-seat underwater viewing area to 50 seats.
In 1959, Perry sold the attraction to the ABC-TV company, which wanted it for filming, but also continued the Mermaid shows, expanding the Underwater Theater to 400 seats, and began promoting the attraction in travel advertisements. The Weeki Watchie Mermaids soon became world-famous, and tourists flocked to see them.
Then came the Rat.
In 1971, Walt Disney World opened in nearby Orlando FL. As the immense new attraction sucked up most of the tourist trade, nearly all of the old classic tourist spots, including Weeki Watchi, watched their customer base shrink to virtually nothing. ABC tried to attract new visitors with a water park in 1982, but that didn’t work either.
The TV network bailed out and sold the Mermaid show to a group of private investors in 1984, but the attraction continued to decline. Unable to afford the upkeep, the owners allowed the site to decay, and eventually state officials began to worry about the degrading water quality in the springs. They sued, and after years of legal back-and-forth a deal was made in which Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection would assume ownership of the attraction and run it as a State Park, highlighting its historical importance to the Florida tourist industry. That was in 2008. The State then poured money into restoration and upgrades, reopening in 2014. In 2020 the site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Today, the Park presents four Mermaid shows daily, and also runs a series of tourist boats along the Weeki Watchie River. In the summer, there are water birds and alligators. In winter, many of the local Manatees gather in the 73-degree water. The Park also has kayaks for rent. The Buccaneer Bay water park has an artificial beach and a water slide.
Some photos from a visit.
Some mermaids (I did the best I could—I was shooting through eight inches of plexiglass and several feet of water):