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There’s a place in Florida where there’s a shiny castle full of junk in the middle of a swamp. It’s one of Florida’s most unusual attractions, and it’s so far off the beaten path that not many people know about it.

You can buy this place in Florida for $2.5 million — $5.5 million if you want what’s in it – and that might be a steal. But that’s getting ahead of the story.

Howard Solomon is a junk sculptor – a really, really good one if you’re into that sort of stuff – and more than a little bit eccentric. For a long time – too long, he says – he’s been making ‘works of art’ out of anything he can find that’s free or almost free: old newspaper printing plates (more about those in a minute), discarded metal tools like an old lawn rake, bits of reclaimed wood, empty beer cans, discarded coat hangers, 55-gallon oil drums.

Two of the happiest days of his life, Solomon jokes, were (1) when he found a mother lode of old oil drums (free) and (2) aluminum printing plates that a Bradenton newspaper was planning to throw away (also free).

Artwork he has created from the oil drums fills the 12,000-square-foot castle-museum. There’s a 6-foot-tall fish wearing a trench coat. There’s a life-size animal that resembles a tiger. And there are so many other pieces of junk – er. artwork – in which he has used the oil drums that maybe you can tell what they are – and maybe you can’t.

You can’t miss the hundreds of shiny printing plates. Solomon used them to cover the three-story castle’s exterior walls. They deflect sunlight, keeping the castle cool (if that’s possible in Florida’s steamy summer), but they also make the castle difficult to photograph. You wonder, though, if maybe they don’t also glow in the dark.

Solomon’s family escaped from Czarist Russia, came through Poland to London, then to New York City through Ellis Island, where they changed their name – the story of thousands of American immigrants. In New York’s public schools Solomon says, he was ‘diseducated’ – flunked or tossed out of almost every school he attended. But he was good with his hands, and he learned the trades.

After serving in the Army during the Korean War, Solomon and his wife settled in St. Petersburg, about 50 miles or so from his castle-to-be, where he worked as a carpenter. In 1962, he moved to the Bahamas to become an artist. But 10 years later, he got the urge to find a quiet place to work in the States.

He found 70 wooded acres in the ‘middle of nowhere’ with pristine Horse Creek flowing through part of it, so he bought it. To this day, he claims he didn’t know it was in the middle of a mosquito-filled swamp – which helps to explain why Solomon’s Castle is closed during Florida’s rainy season: July through September.

‘Nowheresville’ is Ona, a place in Florida that is nine miles northeast of Solomon’s castle (as the buzzards fly). It’s an easy trip to get to the castle from Bradenton by going east on State Road 64, then south on County Road 664 to Solomon Road, then turn left and don’t get discouraged. Eventually you’ll see the simple sign that says ‘Castle’.

In 1991, when Solomon found tourists coming to his castle by the busload – there’s nothing better in the tourist business than word of mouth – he said (or so he says), ‘I will build a boat and float it in the moat to feed the hungry hordes,’ or something like that.

Didn’t matter that he had to chase away the gators in ‘the moat’, but he left at least one real live gator for the tourists to see. Today, he touts the replica of a Spanish galleon as Ona’s finest restaurant. Might be true. I’ve had lunch on the boat, which seats 60 people, but I’ve never been to Ona. Oh. Bring cash. They don’t take credit cards.

At 74, the diminutive (5-foot-5), bearded Solomon still has his Henny Youngman wit, but he admits he’s tired of living with hurricanes and mosquitoes. He also admits to ‘a few health problems’.

And he admits that trying to sell a castle in the middle of a swamp – despite its 20,000 tourists a year – is a hard sell. He’s had the place on the market for 20 years. And what would Solomon’s Castle be without Solomon?

If you go to this unusual place in Florida, and if you’re lucky, Howard Solomon himself will be your tour guide through his castle, and maybe even his home (he and his fourth wife live in the castle). It’ll cost you a hundred bucks a couple to stay with them overnight. And bring cash.

If you take his tour, be prepared to chuckle at Solomon’s corny jokes. On the tour, you’ll see why this eccentric junk sculptor can create such zany pieces of art. Most of them, he says, are ‘the ones that didn’t sell’. The tour costs adults $10 each; kids, $4. And bring cash.

Be sure to ask him to show you the castle’s trap door. No, I won’t tell you what’s down there.

By Gene Ingle

2009 Gene Ingle – You may reprint this article on your site, blog, autoresponder, etc., so long as you leave all the links in place – including the link to http://www.gipublications.com – and do not edit or modify the content.

Gene Ingle, an expert on places to see in Florida, is an award-winning writer-cartographer who has driven nearly a million miles in Florida researching places on maps you probably never heard of. This place in Florida is one of 213 featured in ‘The Famous Florida Trivia Game’ available at http://www.ebookserendipity.com – Test your knowledge. It’s fun and it’s free.