Relatively unaffected by the congested highways of east central Florida that serve such popular attractions as Disney World, EPCOT, the Daytona 500, and Kennedy Space Center, Cassadaga is a small, secluded, quiet community that is one of the state's more interesting rural settlements. Cassadaga is the largest community of Spiritualists per capita in the South, and one of the oldest in the country, with a history dating back to the late nineteenth century (Karcher and Hutchinson, 1980, p. vii). Reflecting this, the community differs in external physical appearance as well as internal demographic makeup from other Florida towns of comparable size.
