← THE REGISTER / SOUTH FLORIDA / COLLIER COUNTY
Smallwood Store
Chokoloskee, Collier County
RUIN
9STRANGENESS
OUT OF TEN
OUT OF TEN
WHAT IT IS
A 1906 trading post on stilts at the end of the road, where the outlaw Ed Watson was shot by his neighbours.
Ted Smallwood traded with Seminole and settlers from this pine building at the edge of the Ten Thousand Islands. In 1910 a crowd of locals shot Edgar Watson dead on the beach outside, an event Peter Matthiessen turned into three novels. The store closed in 1982 and reopened as a museum with the stock still on the shelves: patent medicine, tinned goods, ledgers. A neighbouring landowner has repeatedly tried to close the access road.
HOW IT SCORES
Rarity9/10
Is there anywhere else like it?
Backstory10/10
How did this come to be?
Disrepair9/10
What is holding it together?
Commitment9/10
How far do they take the bit?
NEARBY
BEFORE YOU DRIVE
- ENTRY FEE
- $5
- HOURS
- Thu–Mon, seasonal
- BEST TIME
- Dry season. Access is by a contested dirt road.
- HOW LONG
- 1 hour
- PARKING
- Sand lot
- PAYMENT
- Cash preferred
- ACCESS
- Stairs to the porch; wooden floors
COORDINATES
25.8103° N, 81.3708° W
Chokoloskee Island, south end. Follow Mamie Street to the water.
OPEN IN MAPS →DETAILS COMPILED FROM PUBLISHED SOURCES. FEES CHANGE. CALL AHEAD.