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Poolside, Florida. Founded by Dan Poolside in 1925 during the boom. While everyone else was busy inflating real estate bubbles, Poolside bought water rights and built infrastructure, obsessed with his dream of a Mediterranean resort town in the Everglades. It sounded insane, but it’s not that different from how Naples turned out. Today, this city of 3,991 people boasts a “thriving” upstairs/downstairs economy of wealthy retirees and a rotating cast of service workers scraping by at subsistence levels.

Poolside is built on an island of rock and concrete fill, piled up around a truly massive boulder. The top of the rock outcropping is the highest point in South Florida outside Miami. The stone mound is crusted with buildings, hanging gardens, and decorative water features. Down to the waterfront, a facsimile of a Neapolitan tourist village.
Surrounding the town are the florida Everglades, a flooded morass of freshwater forests and “wet prairies”. The Everglades were acquired as a National Park in 1934, Poolside was spared eminent domain by smart legal maneuvering on the part of the founder. The entire Poolside incorporated area encompasses a couple square miles of swamp outside the town, which is not fenced but clearly demarcated as the “City Limits” by buoys and signs.
All public lighting in poolside has red lenses, to protect the elderly residents’ night vision and avoid generating light pollution. The town has blackout laws restricting open windows at night.