Trailblazing Through the Everglades

If you haven’t heard Museum of the Everglades Manager Thomas Lockyear II speak, you owe it to yourself to make the scenic drive to Everglades City to hear him wax poetic. On Thursday, April 20, Lockyear took his audience at the museum on a fascinating ride across the state as he wove tales of a group of 24 automobile enthusiasts who, in 1923, carried out a publicity stunt of Barron Collier’s to prove it was possible to cross the Everglades in a car. The expedition, which included a Native American guide named Abraham Lincoln, generated 35,000 column inches on the front pages of newspapers around the world. It also led to the building of the famous Tamiami Trail, the Tampa-Miami road that was completed in 1928. The road is still in service today as the southernmost 275 miles of U.S. Highway 41.

The Roaring Twenties were in full swing in 1923, but there was no road that connected the west coast of Florida to its east coast. Enter Barron Collier, the namesake of Collier County.

“It had been discussed by both the Dade County people and the Lee County people,” Thomas Lockyear told the audience. "So the advertising genius goes to work. Barron Collier's looking at this whole concept. He sees that people have tried. They failed. They can't raise enough money. He's knocking on every door that he possibly can. And he's got a lot of very wealthy and influential friends. He has probably followed this all the way up the chain to knocking on President Calvin Coolidge’s door.

"I use the familiar because I know that Barron Collier III says, 'Call me Barry.' So people are saying, 'Barry, you're the only one that owns property in there. We can't really justify spending taxpayer dollars to build a public highway.' So what's he going to do? He's got to drum up public support. He comes up with this idea. He's going to do a great publicity stunt. And what this stunt is going to do is prove for all these people that say, ‘Well, you couldn't even build a road across there anyway, there's no way. It's impassable.’ Barron Collier’s going to prove it's passable."

Among the men who were part of the crossing were: Russell Kay, Frank Whitman, Orange E. Chapin, E.P. Green, L.A. Whitney, John E. Morris, George E. Hosmer, George W. Dunham, Henry Colquit, F.C. Garmon, Fred B. Hough, Amos Blotch, L.J. Van Duyle, Joe W. Hill, Maurice Ayrer, Clark Taylor, C. Shawcross, Hilton D. Thompson, Stanley Hanson, and Allen H. Andrew.  They were accompanied by two Native American guides: Abraham Lincoln and Apache. The group also includes esteemed photographer Julian Dimock.

“They add two native guides to the party,” Lockyear said. "One of them is referred to as Abraham Lincoln because he's the spitting image of Abraham Lincoln. I see it a little bit, maybe a little bit. The other is Apache, also known as Billy Corn Patch, also known as Little Billy. The other fella that goes with them - and this I have to credit the American Museum of Natural History - is Julian Dimock. His plate negatives are nothing short of amazing.”

The Ford Model T was the vehicle of choice for the expedition. They take seven Model Ts on a journey they think will take three to four days.

“It's a low-price car,” Lockyear said, "weighs about 1,500 pounds. It's got this powerful rear-wheel drive. If you talk to people that really know their Model Ts, they say it's the most amazing vehicle ever built, that you can really just continuously fix it and it runs forever. Obviously, the progeny of the Model T is Henry Ford. It doesn't hurt that Henry Ford is an influence in this area, right up there in Fort Myers. He and Thomas Edison had homes there that they winter in. Whether or not he was necessarily involved in this scheme of Barron Collier's, he certainly wasn't trying to stop anybody from putting his cars in the press.”

The crossing didn’t happen nearly as quickly as Collier had imagined.

“After a week in the wilderness,” Lockyear said, "the expedition was considered long overdue. The newspapers start to take note. We've got 24 persons lost in the Everglades, fearing for their lives, still unable to trace. It gets way out of control. It’s the fake news of South Florida from 1923. And they add five women to the press accounts because, of course, that sounds even more perilous. And the accounts literally say things like they're being held captive by the Seminoles. You know, the Seminoles were keeping them alive, thank you. Wild animals. And they're believed to have drowned. It's just absolutely nuts. So with all these accounts of the things that are going on, the Miami Chamber of Commerce says, ‘Oh, my gosh, we need to send a plane out to find them.'”

“They can hear the plane while they're in the deepest part of the hardwood hammock, where they're cutting. And they eventually realize, as it keeps coming back around, that it's an airplane looking for them. Well, the plane does eventually catch up with them. It arrives with five bags of dry goods, canned food, things like that. And at this point, they need gasoline. 'Could you please go back and bring us gasoline?'”

In addition to food, water, and gasoline, the expedition required some ingenuity.

“A lot of this expedition was making roads where there were none,” Lockyear said. "Vast expanses of grassland. They eventually figured out that if there was grass over here and it looked like there was a muddy track over here, you wanted to drive on the grass because the grass would lay down, you'd get some traction. They ended up building 17 of what they called corduroy road bridges, or pretty much what they did is they chopped down trees, and they're just logs that go across in order to create traction. They had to cut down a lot of trees. They had to cut their way through there.”

By day 12, they were within striking distance of Miami.

"They're like, ‘We're almost there,’” Lockyear said. "But they can see that it looks pretty swampy up there. It's like in the Wizard of Oz when they can see the Emerald City and they go running and then all of a sudden, they fall down in the poppies. That's kind of what happened to these guys. All seven cars got hopelessly stuck. And they're like, 'That's it.' Some of these guys, they just left. They got out, and they hitched rides into Miami.”

The beleaguered expeditioners were hailed in Miami.

"There is a parade down Flagler Avenue,” Lockyear said, "but you've got half this group that have basically, you know, either abandoned ship or mutinied or whatever you want to call it. Not everybody got out of their cars and left. Half these guys did. And they're in hotels and they're in no hurry to go back there. They are in Miami for almost a week before they go back.”

"The parade happens April 23rd. Remember, they left on April 4. So the big grand parade celebrates that they did it in three to four days. No, it was more like two and a half weeks. There was much rejoicing and a whole lot of publicity - 35,000 column inches on front pages dedicated to this expedition around the world. Whatever Collier put into it, it was well worth it. As we know, the Tamiami Trail was built. They started work on it a very short time later. And between 1923 and 1928, it was completed. Collier has successfully convinced the Florida state legislature to take the million acres that he has purchased in Southwest Florida, draw a circle around it, cut it off from Lee County, and call it Collier County. This is barely two weeks after the completion of the expedition." 

Lockyear has organized a Tamiami Trail Celebration that will be held on Saturday, April 29, from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM. The event celebrates the 95th anniversary of the completion of the Tamiami Trail. There will be speeches by local dignitaries and members of the Collier family at Everglades City Hall. The event also celebrates the centennial of both the county and Everglades City itself. There will be live music by the Naples Jazz Band, who will play hits of the Roaring 20s. There will also be a motorcade of classic cars and a full parade through Everglades City.

This article is sponsored by the Coastal Breeze News.