Recently returned from Guatemala, Sam Johnson was between jobs, driving for Uber in Gainesville and needing to satisfy his creative itch. 

As he travelled into rural North Florida to help with his wife’s work, Johnson, 50, kept discovering historic gems, like the old opera house in Waldo and abandoned shops across from county courthouses. Always a history buff, he decided to document these sites. 

As he learned more about rural Levy, Suwanee, Dixie and Marion counties, Johnson said he noticed a trend. 

“As I was going out around rural North Central Florida, I noticed what everybody else notices. Pickleball courts or a canned neighborhood or a pre-planned neighborhood going up in areas that you never thought would have these types of things,” Johnson said. 

Johnson decided to focus his documentation on both rural history and responsible development—especially aimed at environmental impacts—and launched “Beyond Florida” on social media.  

Beyond Florida includes a TikTok account with his largest following of over 200,000 followers, Facebook and Instagram accounts and a website where he tracks new developments across the state.   

Closing in on two years of activity, his support and reach have grown along with legal concerns from his critiques.  

The name came from looking at other Florida-focused accounts that seemed to skim the surface, with random photos of burned out buildings. Others seemed like tourism clickbait.  

“A lot of them are, ‘hey, I bet you’ve never seen this hidden gem in Southwest Florida’ and it’s like everybody knows about Siesta Key,” Johnson said. “These types of accounts, a lot of them, are geared toward tourism and stuff like that, and I wanted to go beyond that.”  

Johnson said he smashed the environmental concerns of development with the rural history that Beyond Florida documents. One post will be about a 100-year-old mansion with the next about the recent 3,200-acre Agricola Property in Clay County. He said the account receives strong feedback for both types of content. 

Johnson said he tries to cover each part of the state. It can be difficult since he needs video of the sites, but still, he said the goal is to “pass the mic” to each corner and let residents from the Panhandle to the Southernmost Point Buoy in Key West have their stories told.  

As his home base, Alachua County and the five or six counties around it get some special attention, and Johnson said it’ll always be the area he’s most passionate about. 

He also tries to find stories not already being covered to avoid viewer fatigue. He chose not to enter into the Alligator Alcatraz situation this summer, despite feeling injustices were occurring, because it was already swarming with attention and people who could dive deeper into the story than he could from Gainesville. 

Johnson said he follows local news outlets that touch on stories he could share across the state, and his followers provide a lot of leads, with 15 to 20 emails daily about projects.  

“It’s pretty cool because I realized that people are recognizing that I’m actually a resource for bringing some of these issues to light,” Johnson said.  

And in Florida, there are a lot of developments to track. His website lists 97 developments, their stages of progress and who the contractor is. Beyond Florida focuses on large master-planned developments on hundreds or thousands of acres.  

In Alachua County, his site includes the Eastwood Preserve, Bridlewood in High Springs, the Citizens Field renovation, the Tara developments at Mill Creek Sink and The Hammock at Progress District. 

He said blue and red counties are both struggling with how to handle growth. Wanting an economic boost, Johnson thinks many rural commissions aren’t ready for a finely-honed sales pitch from developers, with a promise to be the next Orlando or help solve the local housing crunch.  

He said rural areas also fail to anticipate that a master planned development could arrive in their town—where it’s never been done and land codes don’t address the impacts.  

Johnson wants to see small towns refute the cookie-cutter developments and prepare for future growth in a way that doesn’t sprawl. He said if codes allow these master planned developments, then they should allow five or six story buildings in the downtown area.  

He thinks cities should also hire a devil’s advocate to examine their codes and look for ways a developer could currently build in contrast to the residents’ desires or community character.  

It’s not just a rural problem. Johnson points to what he sees as concerning developments around Gainesville, like the Eastwood Preserve, as reusing a worn-out pattern that hurts the environment while helping sprawl. He said the east side of Gainesville, where he lives, should try to develop differently. 

“We should be trying to innovate over [in East Gainesville] and build something new that would be more appropriate for the year 2035,” Johnson said. “We should be looking at new style developments over here, not trying to copy or catch up to what the west side did 30 years ago.” 

Recently, Beyond Florida celebrated the city’s decision to build a 14-story building across from campus, taking over an abandoned fast-food restaurant.  

“It ain’t all bad folks! Let’s encourage this type of development,” Johnson said on the post. 

In May, Johnson criticized the High Springs Bridlewood development in a video on his accounts and shared around the city. 

The video started: “This charming, small Florida town is about to double in size thanks to a controversial new project. This story features a developer with a crooked rap sheet and a marketing agent bulldozing wildlife habitat while wearing a pink dress. Welcome to High Springs, Florida.” 

The Bridlewood development has been quite controversial in the city, with commissioners hesitant to proceed but feeling fenced in by their own land development codes and a 100-year-old plat for the property.  

After the video, two entities connected with the project threatened to sue and told Johnson to take down the content.  

“I was definitely surprised, but at the same time, it was a wakeup call,” Johnson said. “Since then, I’ve learned that there are other development companies that are pulling public records requests on me, and it just sort of opened my eyes to the fact that there is going to be pushback.” 

He said lawyers reached out and offered advice after he posted the threat to his channel. He hired a lawyer to handle the situation, and the threat was never filed. Johnson said the entities even sent an apology for him to read on the Beyond Florida page, which he refused to do.  

With social media, he said opinions stated as facts are becoming common, and it’s easy to mirror that trend. He’s started to quote more sources in his videos and clearly distinguish between his facts and opinions.  

“On social media, you have no accountability whatsoever,” Johnson said. “You’ve got a lot of people that are just kind of spewing out information with that they wish was true. I think our society is full of that; there’s people living in an entire world that they wish was true.”   

As Beyond Florida grows, Johnson said he wants to take it to the next level, but his regular 9-to-5 job also pays the health insurance. He’s working with a team to evaluate how to improve and continue providing stories of rural history and responsible (or irresponsible) development in Florida.