In the 1920s there was a bubble in Florida land. Prices rose abruptly and everyone got rich quick and usually rolled over the money into more land -- and occasionally the land was underwater. Like all bubbles, it popped and then to put paid to the mess, a major hurricane hit Miami. People picked themselves up and said they'd never do that again and they didn't. Their grandchildren did and there was another bubble in Florida real estate that popped in 2009. No hurricanes have devastated Miami since then, although I am still waiting.
By 1926 it was a subject fit for cartoons, and Charley Bowers did this Mutt & Jeff cartoon on the subject, in which the heroes buy a house on an island on the Florida coast. The tide rises, alligators invade and the house somehow winds up going over a waterfall.
What makes this cartoon particularly interesting is the weird combination of suitable-for-live-action sight gags (Mutt and Jeff are first spotted riding in the "Presidential Car" of a train; the locomotive pulls the car ahead and reveals that they are on one of those hand-pumped carriers on the next track over) to straight Cartoon Physics gags (if you run fast enough in the air you can get back to safety). Bowers would soon leave cartoons to do weird, brilliant live-action stuff and we can see him making the transition here.
