Why Nobody Wants to Visit Daytona Beach, Florida Anymore

In 1906, a steam-powered car hit 127 miles per hour on Daytona's hard-packed sand — the fastest surface on Earth. That sand built a city. It drew Henry Ford, the Vanderbilts, Barney Oldfield, and eventually Bill France, who founded NASCAR in a rooftop bar on A1A in 1947 and opened Daytona International Speedway in 1959. For most of the twentieth century, Daytona Beach was the place where speed, tourism, and spectacle collided on the same twenty-three miles of shoreline. Then the city started tearing it all apart. It chased away 350,000 spring breakers and got empty storefronts. It banned cars from the core beach and lost the Main Street merchants. It demolished the boardwalk rides for a hotel that took years to arrive. It tamed Bike Week into a trade show. Each time, officials promised that something better was coming. Each time, what came was nothing. This is the story of a city that was ashamed of everything that made it famous — and what happens when you subtract every reason people had to visit a place that still calls itself the World's Most Famous Beach. Sources: City of Daytona Beach, Official History — daytonabeach.gov/365/History-of-City Florida Historical Society, "A History of Spring Break in Florida" — myfloridahistory.org/frontiers/article/10 City of Ormond Beach, "Birthplace of Speed" — ormondbeach.org/87/Birthplace-of-Speed Daytona Beach News-Journal / USA Today Network, "Pockmarked Paradise" A1A vacancy investigation, 2018 — stories.usatodaynetwork.com/a1a NPR, "Daytona Business Owners Fight Eminent Domain," July 2005 — npr.org/2005/07/19/4760258 IMSA, Daytona International Speedway history — imsa.com/nascar-tracks/daytona-international-speedway