St. Augustine, Florida: Fountain of Youth

Drink the regenerative elixir at the fabled spring -- and leave younger than when you arrived! 1937 neon entryway arch lets everyone know they're near a classic tourist wonder.

Take a swig and be young again, but first you have to pay for the bottle.

Luella Day McConnell turned an obscure hole in the ground into one of Florida's most popular tourist attractions. And she may have been a German spy.

No one lives forever, and neither did Walter Fraser, who died on May 3, 1972. But during his 84 years he had the energy of a young man -- possibly because he was the proprietor of St. Augustine's Fountain of Youth. Not only was Walter the city's mayor, and a Florida state senator, and the spark plug of St. Augustine's restoration movement, he also transformed the Fountain of Youth into a classic Florida tourist attraction, adding bronze statues, wax dummies, neon signs, a planetarium, a theater, and a tap in the gift shop where visitors could decant their own bottles of Youth water, much of which was no doubt guzzled, in his rare spare moments, by Walter.

All of his innovations can still be enjoyed at the Fountain of Youth, making a visit to his attraction a trip to a time probably before you were born, and you can't get any younger than that.

The water from the Fountain of Youth tastes like well-water (I'm not sure what I was expecting). The park is actually kinda cool -- small, slightly over-priced for what it actually is... since it is Florida's first tourist attraction, it is outdated looking and felt like a step back in time to the seventies.