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Untold Stories
The sunshine state has a rich and colorful history. For hundreds of years the state has attracted dreamers, opportunists, inventors and fortune-seekers. Native Americans, the Spanish, and American settlers all have left their mark on Southwest Florida. Yet, unlike world or national history, local history is a fragile thing that is easily lost. WGCU’s Untold Stories aims to preserve the history of Southwest Florida communities. The series explores the legacy of the many cultures that have left their imprint on the region and tells the stories of the people who call this part of Florida their home.
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List Of Shows
05-26-2009
| Program was aired on Fri, Apr 24 2009
For more than a century, dreamers and schemers have tried to drain and claim the Everglades. In Collier County, on the western edge of the Everglades, plume hunting, clear-cutting of ancient cypress trees, development of the "world's largest subdivision" and the "world's largest supersonic jetport" near Everglades National Park, inspired a groundswell of grassroots efforts to protect the vanishing wet wilderness.
05-26-2009
| Program was aired on Fri, Mar 27 2009
With more than 60 percent of the island designated as forever wild, Sanibel Island boasts an incredible history of conservation. From its national wildlife refuge and aggressive land acquisition programs to its acclaimed wildlife clinic and 35 years of home rule, Sanibel reflects nearly a century of efforts to preserve its natural wonders. “The Sanibel Legacy” tells how grass-roots determination and diligent environmental awareness can create an island sanctuary in spite of plans to the contrary.
02-27-2009
| Program was aired on Fri, Feb 27 2009
THE STORY OF CAPTIVA ISLAND Legend has it – and historians dispute -- that the pirate Jose Gaspar gave it a name by holding his female captives on a barrier island off the coast of Southwest Florida. Pirates or no pirates, there is no denying the almost mythical lure of Captiva’s alabaster beaches and tropical island ambience. But is that isolated tranquility being overrun by a new dynamic – affluence gone wild?
02-27-2009
| Program was aired on Fri, Jan 23 2009
IMMOKALEE, PART II The winds of World War II carried with them enormous cultural and economic change. Rural Immokalee, built by pioneer entrepreneurs on a foundation of cattle and logging, was not immune; it also entered a new era of evolution. A bomber-training base became the Immokalee Regional Airport. Oil was discovered. Expanding vegetable farming lured farm workers from other states and other countries. And a new industry was born with establishment of a Seminole Indian gambling casino. Immokalee not only survived this upheaval, it flourished as a culturally and economically diverse community which today remains the heart of agriculture in Southwest Florida.
09-27-2008
In the 1700s, Europeans dubbed the Indians living in Florida the "Seminoles" - the "wild ones." Three wars were fought in the 1800s to remove the Indians from Florida, but the Seminoles survived - and never signed a peace treaty. The unconquered Seminoles adapted to life in the Everglades, eventually thriving in the modern world while preserving their cultural traditions. American Public Television picked up this program for national distrobution. To learn more about APT, click on the image:
07-25-2008
IMMOKALEE, PART I
During the late 1800s, Seminole Indians living in isolated areas in Southwest Florida began developing relationships with European pioneers migrating inland. In 1885, William H. Brown and his family settled in the Immokalee area 40 miles northeast of Naples and began trading with the Seminoles. Immokalee was named after the Seminole word for "my home." In 1921, the Atlantic Coast Line railroad reached Immokalee providing transportation for exporting cattle and timber. From 1923, to the beginning of WWII, the population grew from approximately 43 to 578 residents.
05-30-2008
A WATERY WILDERNESS: THE TEN THOUSAND ISLANDS
A maze of mangrove islands meanders from Marco Island to Florida Bay, an ever-changing tangle of trees and shallows that inspired a larger-than-life name -- the Ten Thousand Islands. In this watery wilderness, hardy pioneers scratched out a living on high heaps of shells left by Calusa Indians. In 1947, most of Florida's final frontier became part of the new Everglades National Park.
03-28-2008
THE WIZARD'S LABORATORY: EDISON'S QUEST FOR RUBBER
In 1927, Thomas Edison, the "wizard" of electricity, began searching for a domestic source of rubber to protect Americans from foreign control of this vital commodity. The eighty-year-old inventor experimented with thousands of plants on his Fort Myers estate, eventually selecting goldenrod as the most promising source of rubber. Edison died in 1931, but his research continued until the development of synthetic rubber.
01-25-2008
ISLAND IN THE SUN
Calusa Indians, cracker pioneers and condo dwellers have all made their mark on Marco Island. The Calusa left behind shell mounds--and much more. By the 1960s, most of the pioneer outpost was owned by the Deltona Corporation, which began dredging canals for waterfront homesites--until environmentalists sued in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court.
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11-30-2007
Southwest Florida has had so many flying "firsts" that even Orville and Wilbur Wright are tied to the area's aviation history. Primitive seaplanes,
vacationing industrialists, barnstormers, land sale schemes and a famous chicken named Roscoe are all part of Southwest Florida's colorful aviation history.
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10-26-2007
You could almost call Pine Island the “anti-Florida.” No crowded beaches. No high rise condos. No fancy resorts. No sprawling subdivisions. But to those who live there, it represents all that Florida used to be. It’s more than just an island; it’s a way of life, much as it's been since the first white settler put down roots in 1873.
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10-18-2007
Since its opening in 1963, the 3-mile-long Sanibel Causeway has linked the mainland to Sanibel and Captiva Islands. Notable islanders, including world-renown artist Robert Rauschenberg and Sanibel’s first mayor, Porter Goss, reflect on how it has affected the island way of life.
09-28-2007
In 1885, the first tarpon ever taken on a rod and reel was caught near Punta Rassa – a fishing feat that revolutionized sport fishing and lured hundreds of eager anglers to Southwest Florida in search of the “silver king.” Tarpon reigned supreme, but other sports species abounded. A century later, anglers and commercial fishermen were battling over the dwindling bounty of the Gulf.
Read the Lesson Plan
08-31-2007
Centuries from now, when curious historians and archeologists sift through the rubble of our times, in search of clues about who were and how we lived, they’ll look at the homes that sheltered us, the factories that employed us, the schools we attended and the stores where we shopped -- if they’re still standing. All too often, these stone and wood and steel paeans to Southwest Florida’s past are razed like sacrifices to some pagan god of the future. New structures rise, only to be themselves ultimately condemned as obsolete -- and reduced to rubble.
Read the Lesson Plan
05-25-2007
Today, Collier County is one of the fastest growing areas in the country. In 1923, when the county was formed, it was little more than a remote, tropical wilderness with no electricity, no phones nor a single mile of paved road. At the time, fewer than 1200 people lived in a handful of settlements scattered across an area the size of Delaware.
Read the Lesson Plan
04-27-2007
In the 1940s, Naples was little more than a bend in the road, a one stop-light town in the boondocks and barely on the map. Thirty years later, the backwater was a boomtown, and Naples was reputed to have more golf courses -- and millionaires -- per capita, than any other city in America.
Read the Lesson Plan
03-23-2007
His pencil and sketchpad earned him two Pulitzer Prizes. Theodore Roosevelt was his idol, mentor and friend. He was a pioneer in the American conservation movement, and helped prevent rampant development from gobbling up Sanibel Island. And each time a flock of seabirds takes flight above the wildlife refuge that bears his name, the legacy of Jay Norwood “Ding” Darling is sketched in bold strokes across the southern sky.
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02-23-2007
Summerland in Wintertime: Naples In 1885, two friends from Kentucky “discovered” a pristine paradise 40 miles south of Fort Myers and decided to build a winter resort — Naples. Accessible only by boat, however, the remote resort languished until the 1920s, when trains and the Tamiami Trail finally opened the “Summerland in Wintertime” to development. By 1945, the backwater was becoming a boom town.
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01-26-2007
The Edison Festival of Light is an extraordinary blend of entertainment, pageantry, innovation and tradition that has drawn crowds to downtown Fort Myers since 1938. Revel “behind the lights” of the annual event’s colorful history.
12-22-2006
For more than 6,000 years, Southwest Florida's rich estuaries have been fished for food. In this first of a three-part series, historians and long-time commercial fishermen tell the story of Southwest Florida's "fisherfolk," from the ancient Calusas, who left a legacy of shell mounds--and more--to the rise and fall of mullet fishing. From shrimp trawlers, to clam dredges, to stone crab trapping, "fisherfolk" represent one of the most colorful and vital aspects of regional history.
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