Ted Smallwood Store | |
 The store in 2019 | |
   | |
| Location | Chokoloskee, Florida |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 25°48′46″N81°21′45″W / 25.81278°N 81.36250°W |
| Area | 9.9 acres (4.0 ha) |
| NRHP reference No. | 74000612 [1] |
| Added to NRHP | July 24, 1974 |
The Ted Smallwood Store (also known as the Smallwood's Trading Post or the Ole Indian Trading Post and Museum) is a historic store in Chokoloskee, Florida.
C.S. "Ted" Smallwood came to Chokoloskee Island as a permanent settler in 1897 and became postmaster in 1906, operating the post office from his home. In 1917, Smallwood built the general store that also served as post office for the residents of Chokoloskee Island. It is located at SR 29 in Everglades National Park. On July 24, 1974, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. Today, the store has been preserved as a museum with many original goods and fixtures. However, it is at risk from property developers. [2]
The Smallwood Store was featured as one of the haunted locations on the paranormal TV series Most Terrifying Places in America in an episode titled "Restless Dead", which aired on the Travel Channel in 2018. [3]
The episode told the story of "Bloody" Ed Watson, an outlaw who allegedly fled Oklahoma after killing a member of Butch and Sundance's Hole-in-the-Wall Gang and wound up in the Everglades. When hired laborers to help with his sugarcane plantation in the area. But when they wanted to move on, Watson would take them to the Smallwood Store so they could catch a boat to Fort Myers or Key West.
However, they never made it. Watson killed them and buried the bodies in the swamp. He did this horrible deed for 15 years, until he was caught in 1910 when someone found the body of a woman named Hannah Smith. The townsfolk rounded up a posse of men and they came after Watson who they knew visited the store for supplies every Tuesday. After the men told Watson they were going to arrest him for their Hannah's death, he came out of the store and aimed his double-barrel shotgun at the men. Since the shotgun shells were wet, the gun misfired. The men then unloaded on Watson; the first shot was right between his eyes, while 30 rounds went into his body. When the town did an autopsy, they pulled a "coffee can" filled with lead out of his body. [4]
Collier County is a county in the U.S. state of Florida. As of the 2020 census, its population was 375,752; an increase of 16.9% since the 2010 United States Census. Its county seat is East Naples, where the county offices were moved from Everglades City in 1962.
Chokoloskee is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) located at the edge of the Ten Thousand Islands in Collier County, Florida, United States. The population was 359 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Naples–Marco Island Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Everglades City is a city in Collier County, Florida, United States, of which it was once the county seat. As of the 2010 census, the population is 400. Collier County comprises the Naples–Immokalee–Marco Island Metropolitan Statistical Area. The Gulf Coast Visitor Center for Everglades National Park is in Everglades City.
Everglades National Park is an American national park that protects the southern twenty percent of the original Everglades in Florida. The park is the largest tropical wilderness in the United States and the largest wilderness of any kind east of the Mississippi River. An average of one million people visit the park each year. Everglades is the third-largest national park in the contiguous United States after Death Valley and Yellowstone. UNESCO declared the Everglades & Dry Tortugas Biosphere Reserve in 1976 and listed the park as a World Heritage Site in 1979, and the Ramsar Convention included the park on its list of Wetlands of International Importance in 1987. Everglades is one of only three locations in the world to appear on all three lists.
Ransom Everglades School is an independent, non-profit, co-educational, college-preparatory day school serving grades six to twelve in Coconut Grove in Miami, Florida. It formed with the merger in 1974 of the Everglades School for Girls and the Ransom School for Boys. It's described as a college preparatory school and 100% of Ransom Everglades' students attend a four-year institution after graduation.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas was an American journalist, author, women's suffrage advocate, and conservationist known for her staunch defense of the Everglades against efforts to drain it and reclaim land for development. Moving to Miami as a young woman to work for The Miami Herald, she became a freelance writer, producing over one hundred short stories that were published in popular magazines. Her most influential work was the book The Everglades: River of Grass (1947), which redefined the popular conception of the Everglades as a treasured river instead of a worthless swamp. Its impact has been compared to that of Rachel Carson's influential book Silent Spring (1962). Her books, stories, and journalism career brought her influence in Miami, enabling her to advance her causes.
State Road 29 is a state highway that runs north–south through Southwest Florida. A rural road, it runs mostly through uninhabited farmland in its northern half, and along wetlands in its southern half.
The Overseas Railroad was an extension of the Florida East Coast Railway to Key West, a city located 128 miles (206 km) beyond the end of the Florida peninsula. Work on the line started in 1905 and it operated from 1912 to 1935, when it was partially destroyed by the Labor Day Hurricane. Some of the remaining infrastructure was used for the Overseas Highway.
Arch Creek was an early settlement in Miami-Dade County, Florida, in present-day metropolitan Miami. Tequesta Indians thrived here before the first Europeans arrived in the early 16th century. The name is derived from the 40 feet (12 m) long natural limestone bridge that spanned the creek until 1973. It is part of the Arch Creek Memorial Park at 1855 Northeast 135th Street, on Biscayne Boulevard. It was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on July 15, 1986.
Robert (Bob) S. Carr is an American archaeologist and the current executive director of The Archaeological and Historical Conservancy, Inc. He specializes in Southeastern archaeology, with particular emphasis on archaeology in Florida. He has also conducted fieldwork in the Bahamas.
Charlton W. Tebeau (1904–2000) was the former chairperson of the department of history and a professor of history at the University of Miami and an American historian and author who specialized in the history of Florida.
The Turner River Site is an archaeological site in the Ten Thousand Islands region of Everglades National Park, in Florida. It is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
Jungle Island, formerly Parrot Jungle, is a relaunched eco-adventure park on Watson Island, Miami, Florida, United States. The park is re-opened following a series of major renovations after the park incurred damage from Hurricane Irma. The park features new pop-up waterslides, an outdoor wind tunnel flight experience, zip lines, escape rooms, a Nerf battle stadium and other attractions.
Shark Valley is a geological depression at the head of the Shark River Slough in far western Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. It is currently part of Everglades National Park. Shark Valley empties into Shark River in the Ten Thousand Islands of Monroe County. Shark Valley characteristically includes sawgrass prairie that floods during the rainy season, hence the name "river of grass"—Pa-Hay-Okee, from the Mikasuki language—for such marshes in the Everglades. Shark Valley features a Visitor Center with educational displays, a park video, an underwater camera and informational brochures. The entrance to Shark Valley is located along Tamiami Trail near the Miami-Dade–Collier County line.
Guy Morrell Bradley was an American game warden and deputy sheriff for Monroe County, Florida. Born in Chicago, Illinois, he relocated to Florida with his family when he was young. As a boy, he often served as guide to visiting fishermen and plume hunters, although he later denounced poaching after legislation was passed to protect the dwindling number of birds. In 1902, Bradley was hired by the American Ornithologists' Union, at the request of the Florida Audubon Society, to become one of the country's first game wardens.
The New River is a tidal estuary in South Florida, United States. Despite its name, it is not a river, but a channel composed of many tributary canals, The channel is connected to the Everglades through a series of man-made canals. After passing through Fort Lauderdale, the channel connects to the Intracoastal Waterway and Atlantic Ocean at Port Everglades cut. The channel is entirely within Broward County and is composed from the junction of three main canals which originate in the Everglades, splitting off from the Miami Canal. They are the North New River Canal, which flows south from Lake Okeechobee along the east side of U.S. 27 and then east along the north side of State Road 84 / Interstate 595; the South New River Canal, which flows east from the Miami Canal along the north side of Griffin Road and the south side of Orange Drive; and a canal which flows east along the south side of Sunrise Boulevard.
Shadow Country is a novel by Peter Matthiessen, published by Random House in 2008. Subtitled A New Rendering of the Watson Legend, it is a semi-fictional account of the life of Scottish-American Edgar "Bloody" Watson (1855–1910), a real Florida sugar cane planter and alleged outlaw who was killed by a posse of his neighbors in the remote Ten Thousand Islands region of southwest Florida.
Shell works are large and complex assemblages of shell found in southwest Florida. Shell works include mounds and other deposits, with features described as borrow pits, canals, causeways, cisterns, crescents, sunken plazas, ponds, ramps, raised platforms, ridges, rings, walls, and "water courts". The largest shell works were constructed during the Woodland period in southwest Florida, from Charlotte Harbor to the Ten Thousand Islands, including Estero Bay.
George Washington Storter Jr. was a trader and founder of Everglades City. His grandfather George Sr. migrated in a covered wagon to Platt, Florida, from Eutaw, Alabama in 1877, making his first trip to the Everglades in September 1881 to farm with one William S. Allen.
 | This article about a property in Collier County, Florida on the National Register of Historic Places is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
 | This Florida museum–related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
