Some of the elements of the Spring Break tradition also go way back in the customs of American college students. Traveling to the coast or to the site of a mineral spring as a restorative cure for the rigors of academic life was common among the well-to-do set of American college students since the 19th century (if not earlier).
In the early 20th century, the combination of the establishment of female collegiate alternatives to traditionally male-only universities and the invention of the car created "The Road Trip" as a mechanism among college students for the co-mingling of the sexes. Finally, while the custom ebbed and flowed with the times, by the 20th century college was firmly enschonced next to military service as a primary opportunity for the iniation into inebriation among the 18-22 year-old generation. Thus, the major components of today's Spring Break actually have their antecedents in long-standing collegiate behaviors. However, it took a further technological development to meld them into the cultural icon that Spring Break now represents. Therefore, Spring Break, as we know it today, did not begin until the 1960's, thanks to the invention of what life-altering technology????
The city of Ft. Lauderdale built the first pool of Olympic size (50m x 20m) in Florida. It became home to the nation's top competitive swimmers and attracted many northern university swim teams during the semester break. This annual migration of swim teams to Ft. Lauderdale that triggered the start of what we now call "SpringBreak".
However, it was the movies that popularized the annual event. The 1960 classic "Where the Boys Are" spread the myth throughout the nation of the epic journey of college-age men and women to the idyllic shores of Florida--Ft. Lauderdale, to be precise--to find fun, sun, and true love. With the balladic crooning of Connie Francis ringing in their ears, college students began finding their way to Florida in droves, seeking to escape the challenges of their studies in a place where romance and good times were always close at hand.
