Seeing old Fort Myers

Maybe its because it felt so nostalgic to me, but this was actually one of my favorite field trips so far. I've spent so much time over the years discovering the different places around downtown Ft. Myers. I marched from centennial park to city hall with the #Occupy protesters in high school. Basically, I've always had a lot of reasons to love this part of our city. This field trip was interesting to me though, as I had never once been to the Ft. Myers history museum. Frankly, I've never had much of a reason to venture in that direction downtown. I was very happy to be able to visit the museum and see exactly what the people who ran it thought were the important parts of our young city's history. The first attraction, the "Cracker House," was a very interesting way to start the tour. I was able to get into the mindset of those early Florida pioneers. They were totally restricted to local resources to build every aspect of their home, and I think that its nothing short of genius that they figured out how to build their houses specifically for our extremely muggy climate. The setting up of doors and windows along the compass rose, along with the minor elevation of the house in order to create air circulation are great ways to help out with the sometimes unbearable temperatures.

The section on the "prehistoric" Floridians was somewhat entertaining, though the one hallway dedicated to it didn't seem like enough to me. I guess its far from the most interesting part of our State's history, but still I'd like to know a bit more about it. Here's that big skeleton they had that was pretty cool.

Perhaps the best part of the tour was the importance that our guide gave to the protection of Florida's waterways. Hew took a much longer time here than anywhere else in the museum, and it felt to me like he was really trying to instill in us the idea that the future of our state really is in our hands. I've been a strong opponent of the releases from Lake O into our waterways, and local fisherman and beach-goers are only now beginning to see real improvements in the water quality in our area. The balance of power is so skewed towards those big sugar plantations though, and until people realize that they ultimately have the power with who they elect, the natural waterflow of Florida may never even be close to being restored.

After the museum, it was fun to walk along the Caloosahatchee and see the riverfront docks and businesses. I've been very impressed with the direction our city's infrastructure has been heading in, and the scale of the retention pond there really surprised me. Altogether, I feel like our city is heading the right direction with its development of the downtown area, and I look forward to seeing what they will do with it in the future.