Travel Articles

There’s place in Florida that’s been called one of the state’s last frontiers.

When you think of a frontier, even in Florida, you might think of cattle, of cowboys on horses, of six shooters, of maybe wilderness. But this place in Florida has more fish than fillies, more boats than cattle, more fishing poles than six shooters.

This place in Florida, Chokoloskee, for thousands of years was isolated – but it’s certainly not a wilderness.

Nor is it a booming metropolis. There’s not enough room, for one thing. And it doesn’t have a chamber of commerce to tout its amenities, of which there are few.

Chokoloskee is a quiet community of maybe 400 persons that sits on a 15-acre 20-foot-high shell mound in the middle of shallow Chokoloskee Bay, about five miles south of Everglades City, southeast of Naples. Its residents are mostly commercial fishermen, fishing guides and snowbirds who like quiet, out-of-the-way places near the water and winter sunshine but don’t mind mosquitoes.

It wasn’t until 1956 that a road-bearing causeway from Everglades City was built, ending Chokoloskee’s islolation.

Calusa Indians were the first inhabitants of this place in Florida, giving way to white settlers a little more than a century ago. One of the first settlers was Charles (Ted) Smallwood, who settled on Chokoloskee in 1897 – six years after the town’s first post office opened.

Smallwood and his wife, Mamie, established the Smallwood Store and Indian trading post in 1906, which they operated along with the post office.

A 1910 hurricane destroyed the store, but they rebuilt it.

Smallwood was the postmaster until 1941, when he retired. He died 10 years later, and the store closed in 1982. Seven years later, Smallwood’s daughter reopened the store as a museum.

A visit to this unusual place in Florida is a hoot because the museum is a trip back in time. There’s Ted Smallwood sitting in a rocker as he did in 1950. You have to look twice to convince yourself that Ol’ Ted is a mannequin. All around him are antiques from the early 1900s. The store was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

Chokoloskee wasn’t always quiet. In 1910, Ed Watson, a pioneer farmer, was killed by Chokoloskee townspeople, suspecting him of multiple murders. Visit the Smallwood Museum, look out a back window and you can see where Ed Watson was killed.

Fishing in the Chokoloskee area is the same as it has been for 2,000 years. The town’s fishing guides call this place in Florida ‘Snook Capital of the World’, but many other places in Florida would dispute it. Should you visit and hire one of the guides, you might have to settle for tarpon, redfish or sea trout. Most fishermen would say that wouldn’t be so bad.

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.