Fort Myers Sanibel Interesting Tidbits

• Tarpon fishing originated in Southwest Florida's Pine Island Sound in the late 1880s. Boca Grande Pass, the water between Cayo Costa and Gasparilla islands, is considered the "Tarpon Fishing Capital of the World."
• Grab a picnic lunch and go kayaking in Lovers Key State Park, named one of Florida's top 10 beaches by The Travel Channel.
• For 15 miles, Fort Myers' McGregor Boulevard is lined on both sides with statuesque royal palm trees, the first 200 of which were imported from Cuba and planted by Thomas Edison. It’s no wonder Fort Myers is known as the City of Palms.
• The first European visitor to Florida was Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon, who visited Pine Island in 1513 and was later mortally wounded in these same waters by a Calusa Indian arrow.
• Captiva Island has been ranked one of the country's most romantic beaches for several years by Stephen P. Leatherman, aka Dr. Beach and recognized as one of the nation's foremost beach authorities.
• Thomas Edison, who spent 46 winters in Fort Myers, is considered the most inventive man who ever lived, holding 1,097 patents for everything from light bulbs, cement and phonographs to the natural rubber he made from goldenrod.
• Lee County beaches are ranked some of the best in the nation for shelling, with more varieties found here than anywhere else in North America. The shelling posture has a couple of nicknames – the Sanibel Stoop and the Captiva Crouch.
• You can boat straight across Florida from Fort Myers to Palm Beach via the Caloosahatchee River and Okeechobee Waterway.
• The banyan tree at the Edison Winter Home, a gift from industrialist Harvey Firestone, is one of the largest specimens in the United States – its aerial roots have a circumference of about 400 feet.
• Koreshan State Historic Site in Bonita Springs commemorates an eccentric religious sect that believed the world to be a hollow globe, with mankind living on its inner surface.
• Anne Morrow Lindbergh, wife of famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, wrote her best-selling memoir “A Gift From the Sea” without ever specifying that it was set on Captiva Island.
• In the early 1920s, a myth was created in an effort to sell property on Boca Grande. It said that Spanish pirate Jose Gaspar made his home on Pine Island Sound, establishing headquarters on Sanibel Island, holding his female prisoners captive on Captiva Island, burying his booty on Gasparilla Island and imprisoning his beloved Mexican Princess Joseffa on Useppa Island. Rather than be taken prisoner by the U.S. Navy, Gaspar drowned himself in anchor chains in 1821, the same year Spain sold Florida to the U.S. government for $13 million. In truth, a Franciscan Brother named Father Gaspar who was on the second voyage of Ponce de Leon wrote a chronicle of the trip. It said they chose names for the places they visited in what is now Florida.
• Cape Coral has more canals than the city of Venice, Italy.
• J.N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island was named for Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Jay Norwood Darling, who was the first environmentalist to hold a presidential cabinet post (in Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration).
• Fort Myers' McCollum Hall, built in 1938, was a renowned dance hall that featured nationally famous African-American performers including Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong and B.B. King.
• One of the southernmost land battles of the American Civil War was fought in Fort Myers on February 20, 1865. North Fort Myers celebrates this historic moment with a battle re-enactment during its annual Cracker Festival.
• Calusa Indian culture, which dates to 1150 B.C., had its cultural center in Southwest Florida. Although the tribe is now extinct, ceremonial, burial and refuse shell mounds are found at Mound Key, Pine Island, Cabbage Key Inn and Useppa Island.
• The Sanibel Shell Fair is now in its 73rd year. Held annually during the first weekend in March, the fair began officially in 1937.
• The walls of Cabbage Key's historic inn are papered with more than 30,000 autographed dollar bills. The inn, built by playwright Mary Roberts Rinehart and her son in 1938, serves breakfast, lunch and dinner to

guests at mile marker 60 on the Intracoastal Waterway.