Ross Allen's Reptile Institute, Silver Springs, Florida, 1950s

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Ross Allen's Reptile Institute, Silver Springs, Florida, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Ross Allen's Reptile Institute, Silver Springs, Florida, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-A28E1E

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Two girls stand in the sand outside Ross Allen's Reptile Institute at Silver Springs, Florida, a roadside attraction that had been professionally wrestling alligators and milking rattlesnakes for tourists since the 1930s. The older girl holds a small red purse with the particular grip of someone who has been told to keep track of it, while the younger one leans against the low wall beside a yellow sign reading 'Exhibit 3 — Ross Allen's.' Florida in the 1950s had decided that its swamp fauna was a selling point rather than a liability, and Ross Allen had built a small empire on the proposition that families would pay to watch a man in khakis subdue things that could kill him. The institute drew hundreds of thousands of visitors a year and was considered perfectly wholesome family entertainment, which it was, in the way that era had of making the dangerous seem like a demonstration and the lethal seem like a show. The girls are posing dutifully in front of Exhibit 3, which is to say they are standing in front of the alligators, because that is what you did.

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