adopted it as her own home town. Here
are fishermen, lawyers, school teachers and
mechanics, housewives and cowboys, grocers
and doctors. They all have one thing
in common: they are natives or very
long-term residents with strong feelings of
love and affection for their town the way it
used to be.
Memories are often ephemeral, like
half-remembered dreams, and, as such, may
change with each individual recollection.
Because of this, there may be some
discrepancies in these tales. This is,
after all, not a history book and should not
be read as such.
The people in these pages have welcomed me
into their homes, laughed and sometimes
cried with me. They have confided in me
(some with tales I could never put into
print), shared their past in a way that has
brightened and brought to life faded
photographs of old Punta Gorda.
Today when I walk into Publix market, I am
stepping onto the spacious verandah of the
Hotel Punta Gorda with its climbing roses
and welcoming front entrance. When I drive
out Marion Avenue, I’m riding behind a herd
of cattle driven by sweating cowboys in
those strange old hats as they push the
critters toward the cattle-loading dock at
the west end of town. When I cross the
Peace River bridge I see Miss Esther
McCollough hopping daintily onto the
mailboat on her way to teach school in
Charlotte Harbor across the bay.
At the post office, in a last minute rush to
mail cards to friends in far away places, I
take a moment to look across the street at
the old Arcade, picturing it in its days of
glory, bustling with last minute shoppers
taking time to sip a cherry smash in
Maxwell’s Drug Store while waiting for the
mail train.
This then is the story of Trabue/Punta
Gorda; its birth, its struggles, its heyday
and its growth to the small city it is
today. Its pioneer families, its loving
citizens, have told this story. They are
truly a breed apart. This story is written
for them.
Indeed, this book was written by them.
Chapter One
The Indians were here first, the fierce
Calusas and, later, the Seminoles. Over 400
years ago Cuban fishermen sailed by the lush
peninsula they called Punta Gorda, “fat
point”. In 1513 and again in 1521, the
Spaniards came exploring under the
leadership of Juan Ponce de Leon. Ponce was
fatally wounded by a Calusa arrow and his
men set sail for Cuba where he died.
There was quiet amid the mangroves and
palmettos for a long time; then came the
Seminole Wars in the mid 1800s and that
proud tribe was forced south into the
Everglades to make room for the white man.
With the departure of the Indians, early
frontiersmen appeared on the scene. One of
the pioneers was James Madison Lanier, a
hardy hunter and trapper from Fort Ogden.
He settled in a small cabin on the south
shore of the Peace River about where the old
banyan tree on Retta Esplanade now stands.
An earlier settlement, Hickory Bluff
(Charlotte Harbor) had been started across
the bay by an influx of fishermen from
Harkers Island, North Carolina. Lanier
traded with them and with the Seminoles who
paddled their canoes around the point.
In 1880, a Chicago newspaperman wrote about
the lush beauty of this virgin land; Colonel
Isaac Trabue of Louisville, Kentucky read
the article and that same year arrived upon
the scene. He was enthralled with the
tropical surroundings and immediately
purchased approximately 30 acres from
Lanier. The farsighted Colonel started a
settlement on the site, hiring a Captain
Harvey to survey and plat the new village,
which he named modestly Trabue.
Years later in 1924, answering a surveying
query from Colonel Hancock, attorney for the
City of Punta Gorda, this same Kelly B.
Harvey describes vividly this section of
Florida before the turn of the century.
“Tampa was only a mere village and Southwest
Florida a wilderness without rail
transportation south of Jacksonville. The
only buildings on the map south of Bartow
were a Spanish palmetto shack for salting
fish on Captiva, one at Gasparilla, post
offices at Fort Myers, Punta Rassa,
Charlotte Harbor, Fort Ogden, Pine Level,
Joshua Creek and Fort Meade. There was a
store at each place with a handful of
goods. Mail was received twice a month and
bacon, coffee and brogan shoes arrived once
a month from Cedar Key on Captain Hodson’s
sailing ship “Mallory” which would return
with deer hides and oranges from scattered
settlements of log cabins throughout the
woods.”
As a surveyor-engineer for the Disston Land
Company, he described his job. “Alone for
months, banqueting on grits and bacon,
sugarless coffee; sleeping the sweetest of
dreams, feet to a campfire, a saddle for a
pillow, two rainproof wool blankets and
mother earth for a couch, downpouring rain
or a starry sky above, I’d be lulled to
sleep by the murmuring pines, the chattering
birds and the racket of wild animal
life--guarded over by my faithful Florida
pony. One morning I found I had made my bed
by a large rattlesnake, which had found
shelter with me by a palmetto clump, from a
chilling northwestern gale. The rattler was
too cold to put up an argument with his
bedfellow.”
Harvey further writes that Punta Gorda was
overrun with bums, gamblers, toughs and
adventurers. There were five murders in the
year 1886 alone. The only jail was a
boxcar; there were no streets, sidewalks or
ditches. The swampland nurtured palmetto
and pine brush, and also bred fierce
mosquitoes. “When it rained, we waded, and
the few lady pioneers stayed home”.
Colonel Trabue, the largest property owner,
could not be induced to contribute any
drainage works or public improvements. This
total lack of consideration on his part led
the townsfolk to a secret, but legal,
meeting and little Trabue was officially
incorporated under the new name of Punta
Gorda on December 7, 1887, and the town of
Trabue was no more, but the Colonel had left
a legacy--the railroad.
Chapter Two
With the advent of the railroad, this little
town blossomed. The railroad brought in
Georgia pine and a myriad of materials to
build the hotel. It brought in carloads of
workers, carpenters, masons and plumbers
from the North and, eventually the necessary
help to maintain such a large
establishment. But most of all was the
tremendous boost the railroad gave the
fishing industry. Punta Gorda had started
out primarily as a cattle and fishing
village, but it was one thing to ship cattle
by boat to Cuba and quite another to
transport fish outside the area. The cattle
were on the hoof. To ship fresh fish long
distances by boat was not possible without
spoilage.
Workers now built a 400-foot long pier out
into the harbor capable of supporting a
loaded railroad train. Next, a narrow-gauge
railway was erected to run from the ice
house on King Street and Virginia to the
fish houses at the end of the pier. A
donkey engine hauled the ice down and the
fish were then packed in ice and loaded onto
the waiting freight cars. Fishing had now
become a full-scale industry. Woodrow Goff
remembers seeing refrigerated cars loaded to
the gills with fish, as many as seven
carloads in one day--5000 pounds of fish to
the carload! Charlotte Harbor’s vast supply
of fish could now be carried away by rail.
Chapter Three
The building of the resort hotel accelerated
and the result was a vast, sprawling wooden
structure complete with tower for viewing
the busy river traffic. A verandah
surrounded the building and trellises were
covered with climbing roses. It was a
spectacular sight and could be seen for
miles. The hotel tower was always well
lighted at night and boats on the bay used
it as a beacon.
The Hotel Punta Gorda brought new business
and prosperity to the town. Generally the
hotel guests stayed aloof from the local
gentry as though there were an invisible
wall between them.
However, local brass bands did play for the
guests as they strolled the beautiful
grounds - the ladies resplendent in their
Paris gowns and twirling lacy parasols to
protect them from the hot sun. The
clientele was mainly the wealthy and
renowned. Names like Theodore Roosevelt,
Winston Churchill and Andrew Mellon appeared
on the guest register.
Chapter Four
Around the turn of the century, when the
Hotel Punta Gorda was at the peak of its
popularity, the evening train pulled in
discharging, among others, a man in a
wheelchair. Several guests, rocking on the
hotel verandah, enjoying the colorful
sunset, commented on this. In spite of the
wheelchair and his obvious disability, he
seemed to command respect. Who was he?
Perry W. McAdow, an extremely wealthy and
influential man, had decided to make Punta
Gorda his home. Enthralled by the harbor
view and undaunted by the late Trabue’s
designation of all waterfront property as
park lands, he prevailed upon the city
fathers to let him build a home where the
Best Western now stands. He managed this by
promising that, after his death and that of
his wife, the property would revert back to
the city.
He further promised to “dress it up like a
park”; and that he did, planting all sorts
of exotic plants and flowers on the
property, including a banyan tree.
The great home he built was a huge frame
structure of three stories, painted white,
with a sprawling porch that encircled it.
It became a dazzling landmark on the harbor
front along with the big hotel. His wife,
Marian, was a lover of the arts and of the
nicer things in life. The spacious rooms
overlooking the harbor were filled with
handsome furnishings and the walls with
glowing paintings. There were oriental rugs
throughout, even on the porch and Mrs.
McAdow decorated the banisters of the stairs
with colorful scarves and hangings; there
were Japanese lanterns ringing the
verandah. It was an unusual home for this
little town.
There was always a bit of mystery about the
McAdows. Perry was a very private person,
not prone to talk about himself and no one
was absolutely sure where he came from and
what accident had confined him to a
wheelchair. Some said he owned a large mine
“out west” and that it was there he met with
the accident that broke his spine and
incapacitated his legs. Whatever had
happened in the past, Perry could not walk
and had to be lifted in and out of his
wheelchair. A ramp was built form the porch
so he could wheel himself (or be pushed) to
a boat shed at the dock and onto his boat,
the “Roamer”.
Perry MacAdow lived in this fashion in our
town for thirty years, dying at the age of
83 in 1918. His funeral was as unique as
the rest of his life here. He had planned,
years before, to be cremated--something that
wasn’t common in those days. He had wanted
to have his body placed on the Roamer and
the boat set afire out in the harbor--shades
of the old Vikings. Friends had talked him
out of this by reminding him the boat would
burn only to the waterline and remain a
navigational hazard in the harbor. So Perry
selected a remote area outside of town and,
pledging to secrecy the farmer who owned the
property, had the man erect a pyre of
lightwood knots to Perry’s specifications.
On a steaming sultry night, young Henry
Farrington was told by his uncle, Albert
Dewey, to “get the car ready to pick up Mrs.
McAdow, we’re going to cremate Mr. McAdow”.
Young Henry, stunned almost speechless, did
as he was told, picked up Mrs. McAdow and a
lady friend and drove to where the hearse, a
doctor and undertaker were waiting.
Another uncle of Henry’s had a Model T that
had been cut down to a small truck and
Perry’s casket was loaded onto that. The
small convoy of automobile and truck started
the trek to the farmer’s home; not even
Mrs.. McAdow knew the location of the
funeral pyre. The farmer, lantern in hand,
led the small procession to the designated
spot. The casket was placed onto the 6’
pile of pine logs; gallons of kerosene were
poured on the wood, “someone lit it and it
went up with a big woosh--just like that.
We stayed out there until dawn and when we
left there was just a great bed of coals
there.”
The next afternoon Mrs. McAdow asked Henry
to take a galvanized tub and shovel and
bring back Perry McAdow’s ashes. Perry had
stipulated he wanted them strewn around his
favorite jacaranda tree. The young boy
returned to the scene, finding nothing left
but ashes and the metal handles of the
casket. Using the coffin handles as
markers, he retrieved some mortal remains of
Mr. McAdow; the ashes were placed where
Perry McAdow willed them. Old Punta Gorda
remembers to this day the funeral pyre of
Mr. Perry McAdow.
Chapter Five
Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of our
country, was the most celebrated fisherman
in Punta Gorda, having caught one of the
largest monster devilfish in the world in
this area.
Thereby hangs a tale, young Belle McBean (Quednau),
heard the President was going out fishing on
Captain McCann’s boat and, hoping to catch a
glimpse of the famous toothy grin, she rode
her bike down to the dock. Sure enough she
heard the well-known booming voice ring out
loud and clear. “We haven’t got a Kodak!
Who in blazes forgot the camera?” “I’ve got
one. I’ve got one” piped up our Belle.
“I’ll go get it”.
Off she went, her young legs pumping up a
breeze as she raced home to get her
treasured Brownie. Flushed with pride (and
perspiration) she handed over her little
camera to the President. Later, Belle’s
camera was returned with many thanks and
Teddy Roosevelt left for the White House.
In a few weeks a beautiful new camera,
complete with tripod, arrived at the McBean
home, a present from the big man himself.
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to be
continued in the July Edition of Punta Gorda
Life..... |
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