Everglades
Audacious dreams and wild heat in one of the world’s most natural settings
You never heard a paddle like at sunrise here, cutting a line across the glass of it, a soft blue seam healing behind the kayak,
the water’s weight stifling any trace. There’s only the drip drops falling from the high blade’s tip as the low end dips into the
shallows, teases the drowning grass below and sometimes gets tugged, jarring the boat left or right. A breath ago that grass seemed a fearsome grey hungry stuff, but with the
gold pouring out up top, light spreading over the plate between earth and sky, it’s a brassy life-affirming green; life everywhere, just under the surface, and maybe that’s what pulls you in. I hear a bird and Jenny
says it’s a heron of some kind;
I miss her details, just catch a rattle as it leaves the branch and then the hush hush
hush of its lumbering wings. Before the heron, nothing, nothing but the paddle in the water and a damp buzz from the banks. But now the sun arrives, joining the old heat that’s too lazy or mean to retreat when darkness falls, and so other sounds will soon come, and the alligators will keep watching, just as they’ve done
every day forever in the Everglades
TTHE STORY OF THE EVERGLADES is an ancient one, unless you’re not descended from Native peoples, in which case your Everglades might begin in the late 19th century, and roughly where they end. But we’ll get to that shortly.
The marshland created by flooding from Florida’s Lake Okeechobee during the Pleistocene era, roughly 17,000 years ago, has been inhabited for most of its history, with the native Calusa and Tequestra people living there some 15,000 years ago. Due mostly to non-native disease, they were gone by the time Muscogee Creek tribal members arrived in the 17th century, displaced from Georgia and Alabama by European settlers. The new arrivals became known as “Seminole,” from the Muscogee word simanó-li, potentially derived from the Spanish cimarrón, meaning “runaway” or “wild one.”
I didn’t get there until the 1980s, and my earliest memories of the Everglades include a toy alligator (which I kept into my high school years) and a sunburn, which thankfully disappeared more quickly.
During my childhood on Florida’s Gulf Coast, the Everglades wasn’t a destination, it was something to be crossed, a morass on the way to somewhere, either Miami, or the Florida Keys, or home. And that perspective was not without precedent: U.S. Army troops stationed in Florida in the 1830s found most of the state “hideous,” “loathesome,” and “God-abandoned,” as they wrote in their journals, according to historian Michael Grunwald, who pointed out that future U.S. President Zachary Taylor, in command of some of those troops, had declared that he wouldn’t trade a square foot of Michigan or Ohio for a square mile of Florida.
This was America’s last frontier, not the red rock West. Consider that in 1860, when San Francisco was bursting with 60,000 people who were fine dining, dedicating music halls and reading news about turmoil back east, the Census listed only 28 people in the greater Miami area, and some of those would have been living in “chickees,” open-walled thatched huts. Pioneer life in South Florida was tough, with oppressively hot summers, alligators, cougars and bears, tangles of mangroves and sharp palmettoes, and swarms of mosquitoes so thick that as you were swatting away one handful, another was stinging the back of your hand. All of that is still here (albeit with fewer bears and cougars) and so the idea of stopping anywhere along U.S. Hwy 41, aka the Tamiami Trail, aka Alligator Alley, which crosses the
Everglades and connects Florida’s Atlantic and Gulf coasts from Miami to Naples and then up to Tampa, never occurred to my parents; why would it. And yet...
In so many hours spent staring out of our family car’s backseat window, I remember feeling that, on the other side of the air conditioning and glass, the Everglades held adventure. I imagined Natives and dangerous and romantic characters living unfettered lives out of sight of the highway, with camps on stands of hardwood trees (such islands are called “hammocks”) hidden amidst the 50-mile-wide waters that sneak by at a sly three feet per hour.
This summer I was faster, and hotter, pulling into Miami in my small convertible with its broken air conditioner. Thanks to Bentley (and to another story in this magazine) I quickly transitioned to a new Bentayga Speed SUV, air conditioning fully intact, and set about tracing the path of those who wrote the Everglades’ modern history, the one that began in the 19th century. My destination was one part of that story’s beginning: Everglades City.
The surviving part of a grand dream has maintained some aspect of its appeal, if not its potential, in that it still holds families, fishermen, tourists, dreamers, entrepreneurs, adventure-seekers, outdoor enthusiasts, descendants of pioneers, cast-offs, rogues and those who simply are lost in one way or another. For a few days this summer it held at least one writer, and it’s likely to hold him again.
EVERGLADES CITY
In 1861, Florida became the third state to secede from the Union, but aside from one notable battle and a few minor skirmishes, Florida’s Civil War largely was uneventful. After the war, Union sympathizers and others who wanted to live on their own terms began to settle the area around Chokoloskee, off the southwest Gulf Coast in the “Ten Thousand Islands” region, where the Everglades slowly pours its fresh water into the sea. On the mainland just across from Chokoloskee, W.S. Allen established himself with a dock and trading post in what was then “Everglade.” Charles McKinney was commissioned as the area’s first postmaster in 1892, and was quickly followed by George Storter, who set up his own trading post and bought most of the town from Allen. Charles “Ted” Smallwood joined the community in 1906 with his Smallwood Store on Chokoloskee island, and became known for dealing fairly with the local Miccosukee Indians, settlers, out-of-towners and everyone else. (His store remained open until 1982, and now operates as a museum and gift shop, still run by his family.) By 1910, among the area’s 29 households and 144 residents, there was a carpenter, a mail carrier, a “wash woman,” a sailor and a school teacher.
Adventurous sportsmen from up north began visting the area, some liking the fishing and remoteness enough to build winter homes and stick around, but that remoteness was about to change, thanks to Barron Gift Collier. Collier had made his money covering New York City’s streetcars and subways with advertising placards, and by the early 1920s he was Florida’s single largest individual landowner, with nearly 2 million acres across the state, including thousands of acres in South Florida. When a planned road project to connect the newly burgeoning City of Miami with the Gulf Coast stalled due to a lack of funding, Collier, who also helped to found Interpol, stepped in. He promised to fund completion of the road on a few conditions, one of them being the creation of a new county named for him. The State agreed, and in October of 1923, some 2,000 men arrived in Collier County to begin hacking out what eventually became the Tamiami Trail. They worked in 12-hour shifts, cutting through the mangroves and cypress and using fill dirt from a canal they blasted to build the 76 miles of elevated roadway. Despite the heat, the wildlife, the mosquitoes, and the explosives, not a single man was lost during the five-year project, incredible at the time.
In 1860, when there were 60,000 people in San Francisco, there were only 28 in the greater Miami area
When the road opened on April 26, 1928, national media likened it to the building of the Panama Canal, and certainly Collier believed the cross-state connection would boost business in his county. To support the workers building the road, Collier had invested heavily in the town of Everglade, which he’d renamed “Everglades.” He essentially owned the town, and set about creating a planned community of sorts, with a hospital; a courthouse; a town laundry; hotels; shops; and even a streetcar, complete with advertising placards. All of his workers lived here and scheduled their lives around the town’s whistle, which signaled the start of work, lunch, and quitting time. What’s more, workers were paid in the town’s own script, which could only be spent in Everglades at Collier’s stores, barbershop, gas station, and so on.
Envisioning it as a future Miami of the Gulf Coast, Collier also set Everglades as his county seat, ensured the new railroad stopped there, built a formidable courthouse and established the Bank of Everglades, which remained Collier County’s sole financial institution until 1949. There was a Shakespearean Club, a library, newspapers and more, but it wasn’t to last.
A land boom Florida had enjoyed in the 1920s finally busted, and then the Great Depression hit. Collier died in 1939, and the town’s future was uncertain. It grew more uncertain still when, in 1947, Everglades National Park was created, the first National Park established not for an area’s beauty, but for its ecological importance. Development across South Florida, including the Trail, which inadvertantly had dammed the Everglades, was beginning to have a major impact on the ecosystem, and conservationists were taking note. President Truman himself came into the town of Everglades to dedicate the park, saying, “Here is land, tranquil in its quiet beauty, serving not as the source of water, but as the last receiver of it. To its natural abundance we owe the spectacular plant and animal life that distinguishes this place from all others in our country.”
Meanwhile, nearby Naples was growing fast, and by the late 1950s it was obvious that the two towns were headed in different directions. Hurricane Donna in 1960 dealt the final blow, devastating much of Everglades and Chokoloskee, which had been joined via a causeway during the mid-1950s. Late in 1960 Collier County’s seat relocated to Naples, as did the Collier Corporation headquarters. The bank left in 1962 and much of the population followed. But Everglades wasn’t done.
Re-named “Everglades City” in 1965, the community’s first transformation was into a commercial fishing hub, but when Everglades National Park officials began seeing impacts on the local ecosystem, they closed the park to commercial fishing, effectively killing that industry.
Whatever its original vision, Everglades City endures as a strong community with a role in the future
The Rod & Gun Club is a national treasure, a frontier landmark to rival any Old West destination
The city’s next move was to become a kind of hub for drug smuggling, and this was not without precedent; it had long been a haven for outlaws. It was to Chokoloskee that Edgar Watson had fled from Oklahoma after reportedly killing Belle Star (an outlaw herself ). Locals tolerated him, but then he cut a man’s throat during a trip to Key West, two men he didn’t like turned up murdered, and employees on his sugar cane farm kept disappearing. Locals suspected he was kiling off workers so he wouldn’t have to pay them, and so one day in 1910 the town had finally had enough. In front of the Smallwood Store, a crowd confronted Watson, who drew his pistol—which misfired. The crowd fired back, and by the time the smoke cleared he was dead on the ground, shot 33 times, killed by the town. The incident was turned into a book by Peter Matthiessen, Killing Mr. Watson.
Al Capone reportedly had a place nearby supplying moonshine to local bars during Prohibition, a time that
also saw rum runners from the Caribbean sneaking their product in through the Everglades. In the 1970s and ’80s it was marijuana, and it became a big business, with the largest haul from the local sheriff’s department coming in at 102,000 lbs of baled weed, seized right there in Everglades City. As Totch Brown—local legend and town founder Charles McKinney’s grandson—said in a documentary, “Our way of life just simply came to an end, so we had to do something... We just finally all joined in, there wasn’t much else to do. It’s just the way the cookie crumbled. I’m certainly not proud of it, but if I was back again under the same circumstances, I’d crawl aboard a boat load of [marijuana] right now.”
Crackdowns and arrests in the 1980s impacted the local drugs trade, and so Everglades City transformed again. Now known more for sport fishing, airboat rides and the Everglades Seafood Festival (which sees some 50,000 people descend on the town of 400 every February), the city seems to have arrived a balance of character and accessibility. Driving around, Collier’s dream is less visible than its decline, but unlike many boom towns gone bust, Everglades City still feels vibrant, especially in conversations with locals—people like Trish, who runs her family’s Win-Car Gifts and Hardware (a general store that has everything you need; wincarinc.com). Through economic ups and downs, hurricanes and the rest of it, Everglades City endures.
TODAY
When I call to make a reservation for a room at the Rod & Gun Club, the man on the phone takes my first name and says, “OK, see you Saturday.” “Don’t you want my last name and a credit card,” I ask? He replies, “‘Reade’s’ good enough, and don’t forget to bring cash; we don’t take credit cards.”
The area’s finest accommodation, and one of the most satisfying I’ve visited anywhere, the Rod & Gun Club (rodandguneverglades.com) was created in 1928 by Collier, building onto the Storter family residence. It’s hosted U.S. Presidents, including Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Hoover and Nixon, along with John Wayne, Ernest Hemingway, Burt Reynolds, Sean Connery and Mick Jagger, among other notables. It’s been owned by the Bowen family since 1972, and the Victorian-tinged main building, with its pine and cypress interior, taxidermy, billiards table and art, is joined by a number of standalone cabin accommodations, which are modern, clean and quite a step up from what one might define as a typical fishing lodge.
I enjoyed one of the best-prepared groupers I’d had in years in the club’s dining room, and struck up a conversation with a couple of guys at the next table, who were staying in a chickee in a local campground, complete with mosquito netting, public toilets and public shower. It was the off-season, hot, and I asked if they were comfortable. “We thought it would be an experience, and that it made sense dollar-wise,” one replied, his face falling
Jenny’s knowledge and careful guidance revealed a privileged view of the Everglades
when he found they were paying more than I was for my air-conditioned cabin with a private bath and modern shower. Hours later, on a walk, I saw them coming out of a local quick-mart with a few six packs of beer. “Hey! You going to join us at the chickee,” they asked? “Not a chance,” I replied, and there was no mistaking their look for anything but envy. I slept wonderfully.
FINALLY
We were scheduled to meet at 6 a.m. but Jenny offered to meet earlier if I wanted to photograph the night sky. She explained that the area’s Big Cypress National Preserve is an International Dark Sky Place, meaning that there’s no light pollution, and so the Milky Way and stars should be vibrantly visible. But it’s been cloudy since I arrived, and so 6 a.m. is fine with me. It’s just past dark when I get to the boat ramp, and Jenny and her son are there, kayaks already on the small beach at the launch point, everything ready to go. “Jenny” is the owner of Jenny’s Eco Everglades Tours (ecoeverglades.com), a former U.S. Park Ranger and a trained naturalist with a USCG Master Captain’s License. The quietly immersive sunrise (and sunset) kayak tours she offers are in stark contrast to the numerous high-speed “ear protection provided” local airboat options. Not judging those, but I was looking to get into the Everglades, not to fly over them, and so I reached out to Jenny, and I’m ever so glad that I did.
It was quiet on the pre-dawn water, paddling in the half light. Breathing-in the silver-green morning, pushing down a canal before turning into a mangrove tunnel, the adventure I’d sensed as a child seemed to lie before me, but still I was only at the precipice of what the Everglades held. There’s an education and knowledge here that cannot be gathered in a short trip, and my conversation with Jenny confirmed as much. We discussed California otters, the local Miccosukee Natives, the future of the Everglades and more, but at the end of it we, too, were quiet, sitting on the water as the sun came up over the grasslands, mangroves silhouetted against the orange-gold sky, grasses in the shallow water under our kayaks shifting from grey to green, herons taking flight and the world along the banks beginning to buzz.
Whether or not you trace your roots to ancient peoples, the story of the Everglades and the individuals who live here persists, a study in survival, adaptability, and strength. For all of its dynamic history and all of its changes, the Everglades’ greatest lesson might lie in the pace of its flow: three feet per hour, constant over centuries. There is wisdom in that, the weight of forward motion and the inevitability of progress, whatever may come. That, and the alligators, is certain, and it’s the reason I’ll return.