Creative History

Located on Florida’s Gulf Coast only a few miles off of Interstate Highway 75 is a place called the Koreshan Historic Site.  The Koreshan Historic Site is part of the Sunshine State’s expansive and sprawling  Koreshan State Park, which is home to much of rural Florida’s flora and fauna and is  a sanctuary for the state’s many unique species of birds and reptiles. The Koreshan Historic Site and State Park are located within the town of Estero.  Estero sits directly in the middle of the Gulf Coast tourist Meccas of Naples to the south and Fort Myers to the north.  Today Estero is home to about 37,000 people and it first became a thriving community in the 1920’s when construction on Interstate Highway 75, linking the cities of Tampa and Miami, was completed. But, built in 1894 approximately three decades prior to the completion of Interstate Highway 75 is Estero’s most famous building-- the Koreshan Historic Site.  What is known today as the Koreshan Histo...

  On November 5, 1780 John Cleves Symmes Jr. was born in Sussex County, New Jersey.   He was named after his uncle John Cleves Symmes who had served as both a delegate from New Jersey to the Continental Congress and as a Colonel during the American Revolution. As a teenager, young John arbitrarily placed the  suffix “Jr.” onto the end of his name so that local residents could tell him apart from his famous patriot uncle.  John Cleves Symmes was a voracious reader growing up, and the scope of his intellectual interests was wide and varied, ranging from engineering to natural science to philosophy and religion.  It seemed as if John Cleves Symmes Jr. would be destined for a successful career in academia.  Soon, though at the age of twenty-two, the younger John followed in his elder uncle’s footsteps by gaining a commission as an Ensign in the United States Army in March of 1802. He went on to receive an officer’s commission as a Lieutenant in the 1st In...