Edison and Ford Winter Estates, Ft. Myers

About an hour and a half drive south of us is the winter retreat of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. If you don't know who they are, Google them and get caught up with the rest of us. Mr. Edison was more than pleased to pose with Carmen when we arrived.

In this and the previous picture is the Banyan tree that sits on his estate. It is the largest one in North America. Banyan trees drop vines down from their branches and when they attach to the ground a new trunk forms. All those trunks behind us were once just small vines. When the new trunk gets large enough, the tree spreads farther outward using the new trunk as support. They can cover many acres.

Thomas Edison bought this property in 1885 and had the houses built in 1886. When he bought the property, there were no roads so all material was brought in by the Caloosahatchie River. The property was deeded to the city of Ft. Myers in 1947 and all the furniture, pictures and even the board games are original. The buildings are beautiful and wide open so the breezes could blow through with wide porches to keep the sun and rain off.

He designed the landscaping for the entire property and planted trees from all over the world. These are Royal palms he had planted. He also planted a 1 1/2 mile row of them along the street outside his property and Ft. Myers became known as City of Palms.

Almost all of the plants on the property were planted based on a master plan by Edison. Wherever you walk you come across new and different plants and they are laid out to maximize their beauty.

A lot of the plants were planted for a specific function. This is a Mysore Fig tree which he and Harvey Firestone planted because they were trying to figure out how to use the rubber in the plant for tires. The large Banyan tree was also a rubber producer and was a gift to Edison from Firestone in 1925. There was also a lot of  bamboo planted because Edison was trying to make filaments for his new light using bamboo strands.

Time for a coffee and a sandwich as we sit and relax in the shade. We picked a perfect day and are enjoying the warmth after weeks of near freezing temperatures. In fact, a beer probably would have been more enjoyable than the coffee. Oh, well.

Henry Ford was good friends with Edison and in 1916 he bought the property next to Edisons and built his winter home there. We are taking a stroll through his garden, although he was a bit quiet. Must have a lot on his mind.

He brought this model T down from Detroit as a gift for Edison. They used to drive around the back country in it before roads were built, trying to find new fishing holes and hunting areas. Must have gotten stuck a lot based on the marshy countryside around here.

This is the pier that Edison had erected so that they could get the materials needed to build and improve his property. The river is so shallow that the original pier was twice as long as this so larger barges could dock with supplies. He had a boathouse and a summer house built on the pier as well as railroad tracks so wheeled carts could be used to speed the movement of supplies off the pier. They would sit in the shade of the summer house and fish off the pier as they enjoyed the breezes over the water. Sounds pretty idyllic, doesn't it?

Along the front of the property, thousands of exotic orchids were planted and it became known as orchid lane. It was the wrong season for them but we did find this pretty gardenia. Just imagine thousands more and you get the idea. I haven't even touched on the museums which feature most of Edisons original material he used to invent the light bulb, the phonograph, the moving pictures and the hundreds of other inventions he patented. It was a great place to visit. Hope you enjoyed the tour.