User:Astronyte/Gulf American Land Corporation

Gulf American Land Corporation

The Gulf American Land Corporation (GALC) was a land development company in Florida founded by brothers Leonard and Jack Rosen.. During the late 1950s and 1960s the Gulf American Land Corporation was the largest land sales company in the United States. The company is noted for it's role in the development of Cape Coral, Florida, and pioneering the sales method of installment land purchases.

In the late 1960s Gulf American sold 173,000 square miles of swampland, dubbed Golden Gate Estates, to about 40,000 buyers. Gulf American built 813 miles of roads and 183 miles of flood control canals advertising Golden Gate Estates as semi-improved land, though there were no utilities or public services. The canals drain 233 billion gallons of fresh water a year into Naples Bay, damaging the coastal saltwater ecology while causing the groundwater table to drop two to four feet. The Florida Department of Business Regulation adopted real estate development reforms in the 1970s because of such abuses.