They had squatters rights until the early
settlers of Hickory Bluff began to fish the
north side of the Peace River, Then came
James Madison Lanier and later Colonel Isaac
Trabue with his little settlement of
Trabue. Fishing was plentiful around Trabue
but didn’t become profitable until the
arrival of the railroad to the little town.
Now there was a way to ship fresh iced fish
to Northern markets and a booming industry
was born in the town that was now called
Punta Gorda. Fish companies were formed,
Chadwick Brothers, the West Coast Fish
Company and the Punta Gorda Fish Company
were some of them. Let’s hear about those
days from some of the old timers.
When asked what life was like in Charlotte
Harbor and Punta Gorda back in the early
1900s, Grant Johnson responded, “It was kind
of like living out in the woods”. Grant was
the oldest son of Sumner and Nettie Johnson,
early settlers of Fort Ogden. They came
here around 1910 to live on what was to
become Melbourne Street in Charlotte
Harbor. His father purchased seventy acres
on what is Melbourne Street in Charlotte
Harbor. When not building boats, he trapped
this land for furs (raccoon and rabbit).
“There were two stores in Charlotte Harbor
then; Mott Willis had a general store and
Mr. Stephens had one with the post office in
it”. The mail boat would pick up the mail
at this little branch and carry it across
the bay to Punta Gorda where it would be
sorted and the out-of-town mail put on the
train. The mailboat also carried passengers
at fifty cents a head. The bay was a busy
place in those days since water was the only
link between the two towns.
At an early age Grant went to work for T.C.
Crosland’s West Coast Fish Company in Punta
Gorda. “We stop netted. We caught all
kinds of fish. Some we could sell and some
we couldn’t”. Catfish were out, but mullet,
trout, snook and red fish were much in
demand. There were five or six in the crew
including the captain. “We would leave
Punta Gorda and go to the mouth of the
Myakka River; we’d fish that shoreline all
the way from the river mouth to Turtle Bay.
We couldn’t go to Placida and Boca Grande
Pass because they were in Lee County--didn’t
let us stop net in Lee County in those days.
The men were out for a week at a time,
living on a houseboat barge. Sometimes we’d
go ashore and camp in the woods with the
barge nearby. There were stores along the
bay but we didn’t buy anything that wouldn’t
keep--no fresh meat, but we had plenty of
fish”. The fish the men caught were taken
immediately back to Punta Gorda by the
captain. There was no refrigeration so the
captain hurried back with the fresh cargo.
“We would gut the red fish, trout and snook,
throw the guts overboard; the gulls and
pelicans following us would swoop down and
have a feast.” Grant notes that the captain
was paid off in Punta Gorda and decided
unilaterally what he would give the crew.
At the fish dock, loading the fish on the
train was an elaborate procedure in itself.
“Northbound trains used to back right in,
near the big hotel and uncouple the
passenger cars. Then the engine would back
down to the fish companies on the dock.
They would hook up to the cars already
loaded with iced fish, then back again to
connect with the coach cars and take off
like a ruptured duck!” There’s a vivid
description!
Woodrow Goff was another fisherman in those
days. He and his wife, Teany, raised five
children and enjoyed a comfortable living
from the largesse of the sea. He had a
large houseboat, five net boats and two
motor boats working these waters and
remembers the good old days: “The railroad
tracks came right out into the bay and
refrigerated cars were loaded to the gills
with fish. I’ve seen as many as seven
carloads of fish go out of Punta Gorda in
one day--5,000 pounds of fish to the
carload. The West Coast Fish Company had a
beauty of a boat, the Sea Belle, 75 feet
over all. She used to go south clear to
Marathon for mackerel, blue fish, pompano.
Those were the days!”
Another handsome fishing boat was the Chase,
belonging to the Florida Fish and Produce
Company, operating out of Punta Gorda in
1901. At first, the schooner used only her
sails for power, later, after being sold to
the West Coast Fish Company, she ran by
power and sail. On one trip in 1915, the
fish cargo of the Chase amounted to 70,000
pounds! Her captain in 1919 was the
youngest to ply these waters, Captain Fred
Quednau. He was seventeen years of age.
Murry Hall was the skipper of one of the
Punta Gorda Fish Company’s boats which
serviced the islands: Captiva, Useppa, Crow
Key and Two Pines. These boats carried
freight of all kinds, mail and passengers
and on the return trip they picked up fish
from the various stations in Charlotte
Harbor and Pine Island Sound.
The fish were shunted down a chute from the
station into the boat’s hold; a deck hand on
the ready with a long pole would distribute
the fish evenly, port and starboard, to keep
the boat on an even keel.
The man in charge of the fishing station led
a lonely life, much like that of a
lighthouse keeper. His home was on stilts
out in the water and he couldn’t leave, save
in a dire emergency. He lived out his days
in solitude, except for the visits of the
runboats and occasional fishermen--alone
with his thoughts, the cries of the seabirds
and the ever present smell of fish.
Buster Crosland, son of T.C. Crosland, owner
of the West Coast Fish Company has had a
lifetime of experience on the runboats
starting at age eleven. Every summer, as
soon as school closed, the young boy would
take off on trips down the bay. By the time
he was in the eighth grade, he was running
one of the boats for his father. He can
still recall the names of the boats; The
‘Chase’ (mentioned above), the ‘Sea Belle’
(also mentioned above), ‘Teddy’, “Powell”
and “when dad bought the Chadwick brothers
out, we had the “Ray, Iris and America”.”
“We had ice houses all the way down to
Patricia, Matlacha, Punta Blanco and Captiva
Pass; to Black Rock, St. James City and
Tarpon Bay. From there we went down to
Carlos Pass and Crow Key. During the
mackerel season, the run season, my dad had
ice lighters, barges with refrigerator rooms
on them and living quarters; usually a man
and wife would live on board. We would
follow the fleet down and anchor them at
different places along the coast. The first
anchorage was usually Pavillion Key, then
Lostmans River, Shark River and Sand Key.
Dad had a fish house at Marathon on the
Keys, one at Fahkahatchee down at the Ten
Thousand Islands and also at Chokoloskee
where we took supplies to old man Smallwood
at his trading post,” It was from
Smallwood’s trading post that Captain Fred
Quednau brought back three tiny bear cubs
that were to become the Crosland’s family
pets.
Chapter Fifteen
Another type of fishing began with the
advent of the railroad, the big hotel and
subsequent influx of wealthy men with time
on their hands--sports fishing. Teddy
Roosevelt was a great devil fish enthusiast
and caught a world-record monster in these
waters.
At a later date, Charlie Hurst recalls “the
best tarpon fishing used to be in the river
off Cleveland.” The Peace River Hotel,
owned by a Mr. Cahoun, was filled to
capacity with amateur fishermen lured by
tales of the fish to be caught in
“Danforth’s Pool”. General Danforth owned
most of Harbour Heights at the time and
there was “a big hole in the river” just off
his property, a choice fishing spot. This
deep hole was always an ideal spot to find
the great game fish, the tarpon.
Alfred Ballard worked for General Danforth,
married a young Charlotte Harbor girl, Hilda
Hand, and the couple lived for a while in
the General’s home in Harbor Heights.
Alfred, who was an excellent cook, was
offered a job as Chef at the Allapatchee
Lodge in Punta Gorda and the couple moved
there. The Lodge was owned by Lewis Calder,
a wealthy New Yorker.
The big hotel was over a quarter century old
when Sam Gibbs came to Punta Gorda over
sixty years ago. His father, Eddie, had
been a farmer--”cotton, corn and peanuts” in
Georgia. He had brought his wife, Lula, and
eleven children here to start a 100-acre
orange grove on Shell Creek. It was a
rugged existence at first; the family lived
in tents, then the 1926 storm blew them away
and the Gibbs were homeless. “Mr. Rockwell
was starting a chicken farm and had just
finished building a large chicken coop.
Before the chickens moved in, we did. We
lived there ‘til we could build a house
across the road from the grove.”
Most of the children worked in the grove but
Sam had a mechanical bent and went into
construction work. After many hears of toil
and a moderate livelihood from the groves,
Eddie Gibbs sold the 100 acres on Shell
Creek; but he wasn’t ready to retire--not by
a long shot. He opened up Gibbs Pool Hall
next door to Mobley’s Seminole Pharmacy. It
was not the type of poolroom you see these
days on Miami Vice with lowlife characters
skulking around and “narc” undercover men
playing a nervous game while stalking a drug
transaction. Eddie’s was a spot for young
people to congregate other than at the
movies; a family place and Eddie Gibbs
worked hard to keep it that way.
He ran the poolroom by day and moonlighted
as night watchman at the hotel. His son,
Sam Gibbs, remembers the old hotel as “a
beautiful place, as pretty a place as you
ever want to see. As many as 400 to 500
tourists stayed there in the winter and
every fall they’d bring in girls from the
north to work as waitresses. We young boys
used to call them ‘biscuit shooters’. I’ll
never know why the name caught on.”
Hilda Hand Larrison has a vivid picture in
her mind of the backstage activities of the
old hotel. At an early age, Hilda went to
work at the Hotel Charlotte Harbor, running
the gigantic monster of a dishwashing
machine. She remembers that the kitchen was
huge and always full of activity: the large
ranges steaming with delicious-smelling
foods and the chef and his helpers running
around in their big white hats. She also
recalls that her stepfather used to deliver
cordwood to the hotel for use in its many
fireplaces.
The family of Danette Dreggors Bonnell spans
a period just short of 100 years, from 1887
when our town was born, when the magnificent
new hotel was completed. Danette’s
grandparents, the Conollys, arrived from the
north.
With them was their young daughter, Louise,
Danette’s mother. She was fourteen years
old and her father had just been hired as
night clerk at the Hotel Punta Gorda. As a
young teenager, she and her sisters had a
great time playing in the cupola above the
stately ballroom, romping through the exotic
gardens and racing pell-mell over the
oyster-shelled driveway and walks. It was
like living in a fairyland with beautiful
surroundings, wealthy and famous people
strolling on the grounds and meals fit for a
king.
This fairy tale ended abruptly when Louise’s
father died and the family had to leave
their glamorous home. Mrs. Conolly, as many
young widows seemed to do in those days,
opened a rooming house on Marion Avenue over
the Smith Bakery. One of her roomers, a
young man from Fort Ogden, Harry Dreggors,
took an immediate shine to Louise and the
two were married in 1903. The young couple
set up housekeeping in a house Harry had
built on Sullivan Street.
It was in this house that Danette Dreggors
was born in 1904, a third generation Punta
Gordan. She recalls that the house was
surrounded by a pineapple pinery, a prime
business in the town’s earlier days. She
also remembers that Virginia Avenue was
nothing more than a weed ridden, dirt, cart
path. Danette Dreggors Bonnell, now a
widow, lives in a small apartment in her old
family home, not far from her nephew, Cecil
Keen, and his two daughters. They comprise
the fourth and fifth generations of this
Punta Gorda family.
The growth of Punta Gorda was accelerated by
the presence of the big old hotel, first as
the Hotel Punta Gorda, later after Collier’s
remodeling as the Hotel Charlotte Harbor.
Not only did shops spring up but
professional men began to hang out their
shingles as doctors or lawyers. Earl Farr
arrived here in the 1920s from Wauchula, a
young man newly graduated from the
University of Florida Law School and eager
to start his practice. He had “scouted”
Fort Lauderdale, Winter Haven and Punta
Gorda; “all fine places to support a law
practice, but the best fishing in Florida,
to my way of thinking was in Punta Gorda”
Mr. Farr, one of our most eminent attorneys
is also an inveterate sportsman with a
delightfully dry sense of humor. His wife,
Sue, recalled fondly the opulence of the old
hotel, the spacious rooms, the delicious
meals and exquisite service. “Earl and I
traveled to Europe many times and didn’t see
anything to compare with the splendor in
which the meals were served.”
The chef not only prepared epicurean
delights, but enhanced them on the buffet
table with ice sculptures: a swan, a
Valentine’s Day heart, a sailing ship or a
leaping fish. Every time a child had a
birthday, the party was usually held on the
hotel’s beachfront at the umbrella tables or
elsewhere on the hotel grounds. Grown up
parties were held at the hotel as well and
were dressy, sumptuous affairs in the
ballroom after delicious dinners concocted
by the temperamental chef.
Emmett Perkins and his wife, Ruth, were one
of the many couples who enjoyed the social
activities in the hotel. One of Ruth’s
fondest memories is of Mr. Alford’s New
Year’s Eve parties. Everybody dressed to
the teeth. “Mr. and Mrs. Alford, a charming
couple, circulated among the guests,
greeting one and all. The food was
delicious and the ice sculptures were works
of art.”
Tosie Hindman, daughter of Cap’n Fred and
Belle Quednau and for years our Supervisor
of Elections, used to play in the old hotel
with a close friend, Mary Alford, daughter
of the owner. The two girls loved to run
down the rambling halls, play hide and seek
in the multitude of closets, cupboards and
storage rooms and ride in the elevator, the
only one in town! One memorable day they
somehow managed to get stuck between floors
and had to be pulled out through the roof of
the elevator. This experience was almost as
unnerving to our Tosie as the time she fell
of Cap’n Fred’s boat at the dock in Useppa!
Tosie gave me such a unique description of
the old hotel that I’d like to share it with
you. “It reminded me of a prissy little
girl, lots of warm colors, lots of yellow,
sunshiny and bright, just bubbling all
over. The ballroom had a dome ceiling and
you could look at the stars at night. Huge
mirrors with gold trim reflected the
dancers.” One can picture those two young
girls, eyes like saucers, peering around the
corner of the ballroom, watching the
grown-up fairyland. 
|
to be
continued in the November Edition of Punta Gorda
Life..... |
|
