By Keith Mahne

The year was 1964, Walt, through a variety of dummy corporations, secretly began buying large areas of land, sparking speculation about the identity of the mystery buyer. At the time, the average price for an acre of land was roughly $185. Howard Hughes, General Motors, General Electric, U.S. Steel, Boeing, and just about every other major corporation was under suspicion as the mystery buyer. There was even a group who believed it was the Mafia buying land in order to hide bodies in the swampland or to build a casino. While this mystery continued to escalate, Disney had to respond fast and so a major press conference was scheduled. Continue after the page break for the story behind the Florida Press Conference...