The Florida Chautauqua resort and campus at Lake De Funiak opened in 1885 as the site of the multi-week Florida Chautauqua Assembly, which continued through 1928 under the ownership and operation of the Florida Chautauqua Association. This once-gated complex centered on a round spring-fed lake and included a train depot, grand hotel, art department library, auditorium that grew from 2,500 to 4,000 seats, four churches, Chipley Park, cottages, tented classrooms, and other facilities for art, education, recreation, and religion. Most visitors arrived by excursion train for one-day, week-long, or multi-week stays during a season that began in February and ended in March, and by 1888 the Association owned 12 buildings and 33 cottages. Marketed as “The Education Resort of the South” and “The Winter Assembly in the Land of Summer,” the grounds drew thousands of people and hosted lectures or visits by notable Americans including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Julia Ward Howe, Clara Barton, William Jennings Bryan, and Thomas Marshall, while helping spur the growth of the nearby downtown business district. The resort and Assembly were part of the broader Chautauqua movement that began in 1874 at Chautauqua, New York, where John H. Vincent and Lewis Miller established a summer program to educate Sunday school teachers; unlike most other Chautauquas, the Florida Chautauqua was conceived by people involved with the New York assembly and endorsed and supported by it, though it remained independently owned and operated. As travel by car, radio, and the economic pressures of the Great Depression weakened the movement, the Florida Chautauqua Association went bankrupt in the late 1920s, the last documented assembly on the grounds occurred in 1928, and the final Association building was sold in 1935, ending the site’s operation as a resort and campus.