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Weeki Wachee Springs is a natural tourist attraction located in Weeki Wachee, Florida, where underwater performances by "mermaids," women wearing fish tails as well as other fanciful outfits, can be viewed in an aquarium-like setting in the spring of the Weeki Wachee River.
Weeki Wachee was founded as a city in 1966 to promote the local mermaid attraction. With fewer than 15 residents, and increased concerns over the city's finances, services, and state park operations, state representative Blaise Ingoglia sponsored a bill to dissolve the city, and Governor Ron DeSantis signed it into law in June 2020.
Mermaid shows were a feature of clear spring-water tourist attractions, particularly in Florida. They appeared after World War Two with the development of both the aqualung and of tourism by private car. Weeki Wachee Springs was the best known of them.
In 1948, Perry spearheaded the development of the Weeki Wachee Springs attraction, and is credited with performing the first underwater shows there. His daughter Margaret Eileen Perry performed as one of the youngest mermaids ever at the springs in 1948 at age 13. It was later that year that Perry met his future wife Dot.
She designed her own mermaid swimming costumes and sometimes made them herself. Similar designs are still used by The Weeki Wachee Springs Mermaids, including her aquatic fairy costume first introduced in Queen of the Sea (1918).
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At age 3, Eric Ducharme went to Weeki Wachee Springs State Park and decided to become a merman. [3] At age 6, he began drawing portraits of the mermaids at the park and making mermaid tails from plastic bags stuck together with glue sticks. He swam in the tails and began training for underwater life. Later, he hand-sewed his first fabric tails. [2]