We drove to Fort Myers to visit the Edison and Fort Winter Estates. It was our last stop on the west coast, before crossing Florida over to the Atlantic Coast.
This was a large estate, and so we spent the afternoon there. You may want to give it even more time. I probably spent most of the visit in the museum, where exhibits shared interesting information – lots of stories and photographs. There were cars, grammophones, and all kinds of inventions to look at.
I knew very little about Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, aside from the broad strokes. From Thomas Edison, we have this gem – “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” So the museum was a highlight.
My mom especially likes visiting historic homes. This was an interesting visit, leisurely walking through the different parts of the estates, including the gardens, a nice reprieve from the crowds, and the laboratory, with the flasks and equipment arranged as they were back in the day.
Edison and Ford Winter Estates
Edison and Ford Winter Estates is a National Register Historic Site and a popular historic home sites for visitors.
This estate began as the winter home and retreat of Thomas Edison (1847 – 1931). He travelled to Florida for warmer weather in 1885, seeking refuge from New York winters and also reprieve from the effect of the cold and long hours of work on his health. Fort Myers at that time had a population of 350 and no paved roads. All of Fort Myers came out to the estate when Edison electrified it in 1887.
On 13 acres of land he purchased for $2,750, Edison built his estate. It became known as Seminole Lodge, which included houses, gardens, and his laboratory. The caretaker’s house was originally a “cracker” style house, one of the oldest buildings in the city and used by Samuel Summerlin’s cattlemen. (Summerlin was the land’s previous owner.) A pool, fed by an artesian well and added in 1910, is said to be Southwest Florida’s first modern pool.
The following year, Edison honeymooned at Seminole Lodge, after he married his second wife, Mina Miller (1865 – 1947). Mary, his first wife and mother of his first three children, had passed away in 1884. He and Mina would go on to have three children of their own.
In 1914 Henry Ford visited Thomas Edison in Fort Myers with his wife, Clara, and son, Edsel. Other guests included the Kellogg and Colgate families and President-elect Herbert Hoover. Two years later, the Fords purchased the property next door and built their estate, The Mangoes, in Craftsman style. It was so named because of the mango trees on the land. Mangoes are still harvested these days and are sold in the museum shop.
Uncommon Friends
A memoir, writer James Newton shares his lifetime friendship with five men – Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Alexis Carrel, and Charles Lindbergh. James Newton was the head of development of Edison Park. The memoir is based on Newton’s correspondences, recollections, and diaries.
Part of the Edison estate is 20 acres of gardens that the family created over their time there. It includes plants tested as an alternative to foreign supply of rubber. Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Harvey Firestone formed the Edison Botanic Research Corporation in 1927 out of concern about reliance on foreign rubber. They built the laboratory a year later. This project moved to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1936.
In 1947, Mina gifted Seminole Lodge to the city of Fort Myers and the estate opened to the public in the fall that year. Mina was active in many causes and she played an important role in the transformation of the city. Fort Myers Round Table, for example, met at Seminole Lodge to discuss community improvement.
Also that same year, the Ford estate, The Mangoes was sold. In 1990, it too opened to the public, two years after its sale to the city and restoration work. According to the estate website, $14 million restored the estates to how they looked in 1929. This includes the Edison Botanical Research Laboratory which contains the original research equipment. The extensive gardens include over a thousand plants, with hundreds of species.
Fort Myers
A Brief History of Fort Myers
As I’m not familiar with American history, I’ve enjoyed researching about Florida, a Spanish-controlled territory until 1821 when it became a territory of the United States and a state in 1845.
The Seminole Tribe
Tracing history is an involved process, trying to discern what’s been overwritten or suppressed and what is accurate, what comes from source material. Many cultures also only had oral histories, languages lost over time leading to a loss of so much. So I read the Seminole Tribe website as my primary source for this post.
The Seminole people are culturally the descendants of Native Americans who lived in the area that is today Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and as far as Mississippi for the past 12,000 years. Different tribes (Yuchi, Yamasee, Tequesta, Abalach, etc) of the Maskókî /Muscogee language, they only became known as the Seminoles in the 1770s, from encounters with English-speaking settlers. It was in 1975 that the Seminole Tribe of Florida became a political entity with its own Constitution.
The expansion of white settlers from the northeast continued to increase conflict. In 1830, the Indian Removal Act was past, which went against the treaties that were in place with Indian Nations. This Act gave the President power to remove nations from the east to the west of the Mississippi, to give land to white settlers.
What ensued were the First (1814-1818), Second (1835-1842), and Third Seminole (1856-58) Wars. Over this time, the government removed about 3,000 Seminoles from Florida and forcibly relocated them west. Culturally related are the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma and the Muscogee Creek Nation of Oklahoma, which are nations of people pushed out of the southeast.
The forts on the Caloosahatchee River were built to fight the Seminole tribe and date back to 1841. Fort Myers was not the first. The previous one, Fort Harvie, which occupied what is today’s downtown Fort Myers, was reconstructed in 1850. It was then renamed Fort Myers, after Abraham C Myers, a U.S. Army officer.
Two hundred Seminole followed Abiaka (Sam Jones) and remained unconquered. Today the tribe numbers 5,000. They have been able to keep their traditions and on the business front, they own Hard Rock Hotel & Casinos.
By the time Thomas Edison visited Fort Myers in 1885, it had been abandoned a few times as a military base and had become a community called Myers in 1876. Residents continued to call it Fort Myers, which became its official name again in 1901.
Edison & Ford Winter Estates
2350 McGregor Blvd.
Fort Myers, Florida
Hours: 9:00 AM – 5:30 PM daily (ticket window closes 4:30 PM) Adults $25; Teen (13-19) $20; Kids (6-12) $15 and kids 5 and under – free
Guided and Audio tours available.