Monday, Mar. 18, 1940
Hog Alias Honeymoon
Year ago a shrewd, rich St. Petersburg, Fla. real-estate promoter named Clinton Mozley Washburn picked up a subtropical island for a figurative song. Three hundred acres of tangled mangrove, pine, palm and sandy beach, just off the Florida Gulf Coast 23 miles northwest of Tampa, the property (Hog Island to the natives; Caladesi to mapmakers) apparently wasn't worth much in the nude. Promoter Washburn, who holds a big backlog of Florida real estate (including some $250,000 worth of cheaply bought Gulf Coast property), saw possibilities in Hog Island.
With the onset of World War II and the promise of a whopping diversion of tourist business to Florida, Mr. Washburn last fall took a full-page ad in the New York Times, offered Hog Island to anyone with a tropical yearning and $150,000 to spare. The ad brought scores of queries, a few prospective buyers, including an Italian from Manhattan who wanted to found a new Roman Empire.
Rejecting all bids, Promoter Washburn took a new tack. He offered U. S. newlyweds free two-week honeymoons in the Gulf Coast paradise. In no time they had hit him with applications for some 2,000 suites. Laying out $15,000 to clean up the island, build shacks and a recreation hall, Mr. Washburn, a quiet, thin man with brown eyes, greying hair and the demeanor of a deacon, set out in search of a king & queen for Hog Island, rechristened Honeymoon Isle.
Last week the royal couple (Newlyweds Mary Beauvais, 20, dentist's helper, and Airline Clerk Tom Phelps, 22, of St. Louis) moved into one of a row of board huts--not much bigger than bathing houses but thatched over to give them a romantic air--and settled down to honeymoon. By June 1 Promoter Washburn expects to have enough huts to accommodate 50 handpicked couples every two weeks, which will scarcely dent the application list.
Meantime, Promoter Washburn has been flooded with offers. A bus company is willing to put up $5,000 for the sightseeing concession. Baptist Washburn scorned a $2,000 offer for the beer concession with the explanation: "If you were to start a new business, you wouldn't prepare for it by getting drunk every night." At present he is angling for a commercial radio tie-up to let the U. S. know how the honeymooners are doing daily. After the honeymoon season, the city of Tampa is interested in taking over the island for a tourist playground. One unromantic newspaper photographer visited Honeymoon Isle last week and wryly observed: "Not a thing on the island but huts, soldier crabs and pelicans. It's going to be tough if they don't know how to play cards.''
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