YOU GET THERE BY BOAT, HORSE, OR OX CART. In bygone days news of ships and shipping was big news in Fort Myers, simply because ships provided the only connection with the outside world. By 1887, Henry Plants Florida Southern Railway had been extended to Punta Gorda. Fort Myers was outraged and was without rail service until 1904. Before then, the only way to reach FM was by foot, horse, boat, or ox cart. On trips to and from the Big Cypress Swamp or the Everglades, the only form of access was by ox cart. Bill Brown, owner of Browns Boat Landing, often said that a ox cart trip from Browns Boat Landing, near Immokalee, to Fort Myers took almost five days, during the wet season. Many historians suggest that it was Fort Myers lack of rail access that made the area attractive to wealthy industrialists who sought privacy and exclusivity. Some conspiracy theorists suggest that it was no accident that Edison, Ford, Firestone, and Burgess (batteries) chose this area for the winter destination. After the sinking of the USS Maine and the Spanish-American War, these inventors and industrialists went to work to prepare America for the next conflict. After Edison had passed away and his FM laboratory had caught fire, Henry Ford immediately sent several of his employees to retrieve the remains of the laboratory and all the dirt under the building, to a depth of three feet. We will never know what was in that dirt.
Posted on: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 00:04:12 +0000
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