Do you remember back in grade school when your teacher announced to the whole class that you would be going on a field trip to some random historical museum and that you had to have your permission slip signed and turned in by the end of the week? Nine times out of ten, the trips were to a museum that smelled like moth balls and formaldehyde and that showcased ancient artifacts kept behind security glass so all you could do was glance at them while you and the other 100 kids walked by like zombies.
So when my best friend suggested that we go on a Saturday canoe trip and tour of the Koreshan State Park & Historical Site (which incidentally is only about five miles from my house), I shuddered at the thought of shuffling through musty-smelling “olde Florida style” farm houses and dilapidated cottages. The canoeing part was definitely “up my alley” as we are always equipped with a fully-stocked picnic cooler complete with shrimp cocktail and brie cheese and crackers on our weekend nature adventures. A bid decadent? Well maybe. But we’re not at all the ham and cheese sandwich kind of girls.
We began the day early and arrived at the park around 9 a.m. It was only a $4 entrance fee and the guided tour of the historical site was $2 for adults and $1 for children. They also offer a self-guided tour booklet and audio tapes that you can pick up at the ranger station. We opted for the self-guided tour because I know how I get and if it’s boring . . . I’m hitting the canoe trails real fast. We parked the car, grabbed some bottled water and bug spray (which surprisingly we didn’t need to use) and hit the well-worn path toward the Koreshan settlement. I can’t believe I pass this place every day going to work on Fort Myers Beach. It was as if we had stepped back in time over a hundred years! The path was lined with native ferns and tropical vegetation and canopied by huge live oak trees that were draped in silvery-blue Spanish moss. It was absolutely breathtaking in the cool morning dew.
Once we reached the Koreshan settlement, we started off our self guided tour and found out some very interesting (and quite bizarre) historical information about this tiny area niched-out on just a half mile of the Estero River. Back in 1894, Cyrus Reed Teed brought his followers from Chicago to Estero to build a New Jerusalem for his new faith, Koreshanity. I guess the snowbirds have been coming to Southwest Florida for quite a long time. Besides thinking of himself as immortal, Teed also believed that the entire universe existed within a giant, hollow sphere and his followers actually carried out survey experiments to prove the horizon on the beaches of Lee County curved upward. After Teed’s death in 1908, (I guess he wasn’t immortal after all) the colony began fading and in 1961 the last four members deeded the land to the state of Florida. Today, park visitors can fish, picnic, boat, hike and camp on this 26-acre preserve.
After spending almost an hour touring the settlement, we headed down to the boat launch area on the river to rent a canoe for the rest of the day. And that’s when our canoeing adventure began. But that’s . . . for another story. Read it here and find out how canoeing upstream is better than any day at the gym.
