Museum of the Islands

Preserving the past for the future on Pine Island, Florida

Travel

Travel around Pine Island was not an easy endeavor during the early years.  If you lived in Bokeelia and wanted to go to St. James City to get a package that arrived on the mail boat, you would leave in the morning and walk along a dirt trail and return home the next morning.  That trail looked like this:

St James City Road

Credit this photo: State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/34162

St. James City street scene in September 1905.  This photo is from an old postcard marked September 1905.  In those days it was quite a busy place.  Note the long line of palm trees bordering the avenue and the over grown grass in the lawn.  These trees were probably planted during the St. James-on-the Gulf era 10 years prior.

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Credit this Photo Museum of the Islands

Or if you were lucky to have a wagon and oxen, that trip might take less than a day.   Unless of course it was rainy season and the road was nothing but mud.

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The family loaded in the wagon for a trip into town

Photo Credit Museum of the Islands.

If you wanted to travel to Fort Myers, you could take the steamer.  Pictured is a steam ship pushing a barge past Pine Island.  Maybe it is a load of mangoes destined for Fort Myers, and beyond.

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Photo Credit Museum of the Islands

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