Why was Everglades City, an outpost of Florida’s “last frontier”, so elegantly designed?
 

Why was it called the “Tamiami Trail”?
 

What made the Ten-Thousand Islands so attractive to pirates and bootleggers?
 

This brief history gives some answers … and, hopefully, helps the reader appreciate the area’s rural surroundings. It tells the story from early settlements after the Civil War, through expansion in the Florida Land Boom, to the present.
 

The author describes the struggles of pioneers, Collier’s building of Everglades City and the Tamiami Trail in the 1920’s, the growth of Chokoloskee, and the farming and logging industries in the outlying towns of Ochopee, Copeland, and Jerome.