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FORT MYERS , fifty miles south,
may lack the ?lan of Sarasota, but it's nonetheless one of the
up-and-coming communities of the southwest coast. Fortunately,
most of its recent growth has occurred on the north side of the
wide Caloosahatchee River, which the town straddles, allowing
the traditional center, along the waterway's south shore, to remain
relatively unspoiled.
Once across the river, US-41 strikes downtown
Fort Myers, picturesquely nestled on the water's edge. Here, the
Fort Myers Historical Museum , 2300 Peck St (Tues-Sat
9am-4pm; $2.50), provides thorough insights into the town's past,
including the exploits of Dr Franklin Miles, the local man who
developed Alka Seltzer.
In 1885, six years after inventing the light bulb,
Thomas Edison collapsed from exhaustion and was
instructed by his doctor to find a warm working environment or
face an early death. Vacationing in Florida, the 37-year-old Edison
bought fourteen acres of land on the banks of the Caloosahatchee
and cleared a section of it to spend his remaining winters (he
lived to be 84) at what became the Edison Winter Home
, 2350 McGregor Blvd, a mile west of downtown (Mon-Sat 9am-5pm,
Sun noon-5pm; guided tours every half-hour; $12; an extra $2 allows
you entry into the Ford Winter Home). The tours begin in the gardens,
planted with such exotics as African Sausage trees and wild orchids.
The house (which you can glimpse only through the windows), though,
is an anticlimax, its plainness probably due to the fact that
Edison spent most of his waking hours inside the laboratory
, attempting to turn the latex-rich sap of Solidago edisonii (a
strain of goldenrod weed he developed) into rubber. However, when
the tour reaches the engrossing museum the full
impact of Edison's achievements becomes apparent: a design for
an improved ticker-tape machine provided him with the funds for
the experiments that led to the creation of the phonograph in
1877, and financed research that resulted in the incandescent
light bulb. Here, too, you'll see some of the ungainly cinema
projectors derived from Edison's Kinetoscope - which brought him
a million dollars a year in royalties from 1907. Next door, the
uninspiring Ford Winter Home , bought by Henry
Ford in 1915, is open for viewing (tours as for Edison Home).
The banyan tree outside the ticket office is the largest tree
in the state, grown by Edison from a seedling.
