Everglades City, FL news and local guide

American settlement began after the Civil War, when Union sympathizers who had farmed on Cape Sable to supply Key West moved up the coast. The first permanent settler, William Smith Allen, arrived on Potato Creek, later the Allen River, in 1873. After he retired to Key West in 1889, George W. Storter Jr., known for his sugarcane, became the main landowner, opened a trading post in 1892 and got a post office named Everglade in 1895. He began hosting Northern sportsmen who came by yacht, and his house grew into the Rod and Gun Club, visited by U.S. presidents. A school organized in 1893 lost one building to a tornado in 1895 and another to the 1910 hurricane. In 1922 Barron Collier began buying land in what was then southern Lee County, and in 1923 the legislature created Collier County with Everglade, then home to about a dozen families, as its seat. The town, now Everglades City, was the county seat for a time. Sources Wikipedia: Everglades City, Florida