Showing posts with label Ochopee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ochopee. Show all posts

Monday, February 17, 2014

WHAT HAPPENED TO OCHOPEE?


In this 2012 file photo, students from Everglades City School, along with the help of others, paint the Ochopee Post Office on for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The post office, which is considered the smallest one in the United States, has been open since 1953.

 Jeff Whichello is a friend, and was the leader of the first writing group I ever attended in Pennsylvania. I still miss those meetings, but even though he left PA, Jeff remained supportive as we both struggled to write and publish our first books. I'm honored to be able to introduce you to his debut novel, a nonfiction masterpiece 

WHAT HAPPENED TO OCHOPEE? 

This is an article on What Happened To Ochopee? 
by Brent Batten for the Naples Daily Newspaper.

Perched alongside U.S. 41 east of Everglades City sits the “America’s Smallest Post Office,” an attraction that draws people to Ochopee if for no other reason than the opportunity to have a picture taken next to the novelty.

What visitors don’t realize is that the tiny converted storage shed is a remnant of a much larger history. 

It is a story of free spirits and adventurers who once populated Ochopee, supporting a motel, restaurants, bars, industry, a general store and sundry tourist attractions. It is also a history of ambitious plans to carve a national preserve out of thousands of acres abutting Everglades National Park and of how those plans ran headlong into the aspirations of the locals, mostly to the detriment of the latter.

Jeff Whichello, whose family ran the Golden Lion Motor Inn, has chronicled the stories in a book, “What Happened to Ochopee?”

In it he describes a childhood spent getting to know the characters that populated the village; the hunters, fishermen, Miami Dolphins fans fleeing television blackouts imposed by the NFL and even the occasional movie star who would come and go.

Whichello, now a computer programmer living in the Tampa area, where his family settled after being forced to sell the motel, will be at the Everglades Seafood Festival this weekend signing copies of his book.
 As hard as it may be for this weekend’s visitors to rustic Everglades City to believe, a trip there was considered “going into town” by Ochopee residents in the 1960s and 1970s. Driving all the way into Naples was an even bigger deal — “going to the city” — where one might find exotic items such as ice cream.


The slow demise of Ochopee began in 1968, when work began on a jetport envisioned to serve the growing Miami market. The FAA had plans to build six runways on 35 square miles near the Dade-Collier county line smack in the middle of the Everglades. It was to be the biggest airport in the world, capable of handling the supersonic passenger jets of the future. 

Work was already underway when environmentalists rallied to put a stop to the project. Influential politicians came to their aid and in the end the jetport idea was scuttled.

The political pendulum swung the other way and a report from the National Academy of Sciences suggested preserving land around the national park would minimize the impacts of development.

Thus began what Ochopee locals deemed a land grab that resulted in residents being forced from their property and the Golden Lion, once a motel, restaurant and bar, converted to the headquarters of what is now the Big Cypress National Preserve.

Whichello details the hearings and meetings that constituted a battle between the locals and the political interests, many of them with little connection to Florida.

Whichello was just a teenager as the drama unfolded and his family lost its business. They moved to Brandon where they mostly still live, “just getting by,” he said.

“What Happened to Ochopee?” has the tone of a lament, retrospective of a simple time when neighbors sat on the docks behind their homes and caught their supper or communally boiled crabs and played cards to while away the evenings.

An aspiring writer, he says he felt the need to get the Ochopee story off his chest before he could move on to other subjects. “After the traumatic experience, I couldn’t get over it. When I was 19 I started collecting information. A year ago I started writing,” he said.

Seafood Festival visitors might wander a few miles east of State Road 29 to see the almost comical post office and giant skunk ape statue that stand as visible remains of the Ochopee that once was. To the former residents and the few still hanging on there, the story is anything but comical.
This was originally published in the Naples Daily News 
written by Brent Batten. 



 
Like a tall palm tree growing from a single seed, the community of Ochopee emerged from one man's solitary dream. In 1928, twenty-eight-year-old James Gaunt saw undiscovered potential in the swamp that lay on either side of the new road that connected Tampa to Miami. His love of farming and community fueled his actions to build his own world.

One of the top producers of tomatoes in the country, Ochopee earned its place on the Florida map but when the market dropped, other adventurers joined. Only people with a certain creativity, work-ethic, and talent succeeded in this mucky land. An airboat and a swamp buggy venture, animal exhibits, real estate businesses, a water company, a mining operation, restaurants, a motel, bars, a general store, a campground, movie makers, and a skunk-ape followed Gaunt to the grassy field he first declared his home. A small twentieth century pioneer town prospered on the open plain where children were born and families lived in peace.

Then, the takers came. These big-picture people were unconcerned about the details of their actions while staring at a map of Florida from their government offices. They were unable to imagine or realize the activities of this unique community living free in the wild. When environmentalists and developers collided on the Ochopee battle ground, it was the common person, the one who scrambled every day to feed their family who suffered in this war. The only one with a stake in it, they had something to lose.

This is a true story. Story quotes were taken from newspapers and other sources and feelings, thoughts and emotions were taken from interviews with eye-witnesses. The book has 50 images.



From birth, the author spent his childhood alone in the Florida Everglades keeping company with the animal life while his parents worked to build a motel and restaurant business in the tiny community of Ochopee. Once his sister was old enough they set out on combined adventures, discovering the advantages of a simple and quiet existence of catching fish in the afternoon sun. The American dream which his parents constructed alongside his father's five siblings came to a sudden close with the intervention of government forces, but the author never forgot the anguish he witnessed as his home town fought to survive against the land acquisition of the Big Cypress swamp. He later moved away to Brandon near Tampa where life commenced but with the first act in the back of his mind he continued to dwell on the topic of government abuse against families. Through the years he returned to the Everglades in order to maintain friendships and the original connection to the land. He continued to invent a host of stories and writings while pursuing a career in computer science. He travelled to New York City and worked in Manhattan for 3 years and then in Alabama before returning home to Florida having left the state for over six years. In current times he works part time writing a handful of books the first of which is for Ochopee.


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