Everglades City & Chokoloskee, Florida | Untold Stories 

We left Everglades city in a skiff and got lost in the 10,000 islands and it was getting dark. I just kept the sun on my left and kept going until I hit the highway and our truck and trailer was less than a quarter mile away I felt really blessed Edit: God Bless Totch the King of the Everglades

I love this country. I love Florida and the Everglades

So much history in Southwest Florida

I had the pleasure of meeting O.B. Osceola, Sr, he was a regular patron one of my former jobs in Naples. He always came in with a smile and had a story to tell about old Florida which I always would find interesting. Great man, it was nice to see him again on here.

Great work.... love from Ghana🇬🇭

I'm a Miami native and I remember the Everglades city drug smuggling of the 1980's. The reason they got busted so quick was because the people involved made lots of "noise". In other words, they were not quiet and discrete. Young guys, fishermen, that were running old shit box boats, driving around in old beat up trucks living in houses in disrepair were all of a sudden driving brand new trucks with all the "bling", new big fast boats and they bought or built new big houses. Walking around in expensive clothes and wearing Rolex watches. This draws attention and it didn't take long for word to get to the Feds. And I say "Feds" because in those little towns you can bet local police were part of it. Paid to look the other way and to give the runners a heads up if anyone was looking at them. Remember the story of Frank Lucas? Basically the same thing. It was the Chinchilla coat at the boxing match that sealed his fate. LOL

My favorite part of Florida

Proud to be a Southwest Floridian. It gets in your bones. We make the Wild West look like child’s play down here. Of course it’s been yankeefied quite a bit since I was little.

I lived there as a kid from 76-78, my brother and me had some of our best days there, always something to get into, skim boarding down the flooded roads and loved surfing behind the garbage trucks, also a day down at Moma Dots for a cheeseburgers was awesome, truly a fun time, went to school with a lot of totch’s younger gen. kids and nieces and nephews, a beautiful place, I was between the post office and our fish house the day Elvis died, always remember that

I grew up in Lakeland, but visited Chok often. Father had a fish camp that taken eminent domain with expansion of park. Father friend of Ted Smallwood, I'd met Totch one day in Second Bay, Lossmans. It was no territory for wussies. I was small kid, taught how to sit in water and breathe through hollowed bamboo, in case stranded in 10k. Thought was mosquitoes could empty one's body of blood. It was the "noseeums" that drove me crazy. It was sportsman fishing, topwater plugs for snook. When met Totch, he still called them soapfish. Snook meat filet the best can eat, but cook it with its skin, tasted like soap. It was years before they learned to filet it, remove the skin. We used to take stacks of grapefruit net bags to Mr. Hamilton. We would buy a bag full of stone crab claws for $5. One time arriving at his house, told us couldn't sell to us anymore, signed contract with Joe's, but his daughter lived next door.

Florida is the most beautiful state in America 🇺🇸

A few decades ago, I took an airboat ride near there, and I thought the teenager who piloted it was doing a corny pirate accent the entire tour. When I spoke with him afterwards, I discovered that that was just how he talked. His people had been real smugglers and the historical pirate accent was a real deal.

I enjoy watching this I'm from Miami Florida

in the 70s Everglades city was pot central everyone was involved with smuggling from the sheriff 60 minutes did a show on it

Amazing history!

I lived in Miami 59-67 the times spent in Keys and Everglades with skeeters and sand flies made life horribly miserable I could never adjust.

I'm a native Floridian from central/west coast of Fl.I really enjoyed this video very interesting.

Born and raised in Everglades City

Have Harley will travel.. arriving tomorrow and thanks for the great youtube vider..

I spent most of my preteen and tween years living outside of Everglades where my gramps ran an airboat guide and tour business.

TY 4 video fond memories 4me fm that time & era ;)

Ate my first pair of frog legs at the rod and gun club. ❤ Proud to be form southwest Florida the salt runs in my veins to this day.

History, is amazing.

Fascinating

Great history, all true, I’m impressed

Very interesting...thank you

Love the history lesson

Good documentary

I was born in Melbourne Fl in 1952 which was big city living compared to this but I can remember going to Orlando on weekends to go shopping . We would always eat at Morrisons cafeteria , that was a big deal . I miss it

The Son Collier Jr was quoted as saying "one thing is for sure these roads could have never been built without the Indians" it's amazing to me these men have all the technology in the world to carve into the Earth but could not complete these projects without the local Indians help. They paint the Indians as savages when really they were intellectual people with the ability to tame the land and erect large building's.

sad how all these series never realy have there facts straight they always leave out the real pioneers

My gramparents own a house down there I go every weekend

A great lesson in Acting not Talking "ACTA NON VERBA" getting the impossible done in not impossible.

🙏

Best thing in Everglades City was *SUSIE'S STATION*

I'm writing a comic that is actually set in Chokoloskee and Everglades City.

Just after 8 minutes could the man in the white suit be David Raborn MD He had been a State Representative of Dixie County and moved to Tampa?

its no less harmful than "the backer"

"Script money" this is how you pay your employees and ensure they spend that money in your stores. I wonder if there was an exchange rate to convert the script money to actual currency in case the people wanted to travel outside the city. For example one dollar script money is worth what in us currency? I would imagine there is. The idea of "script money" allows the boss of the town to make more money. For example he stocks his stores using US currency then sells those products to his towns people for script money. In order for this to make business sense, any item he buys for $1.00 using actual US currency would have to sell for more, say $1.05 in his script money. He had to be making 5-10 cents on the dollar. So if a town resident/employee wanted to convert his script money to US currency there had to be an exchange rate. Using the above example, $1.05 script money gets you $1.00 in actual US currency.

@Snook On the fly

My great great grandpa died of yellow fever at 8 years old. Luckily he was an alpha male and was able to find a hotty to create my grandiddy.

I’ve been down that way a couple of times and I gotta say that rural mainland Monroe County is a beautifully desolate wonderland. I know that Everglades City is technically Collier County but let’s be real, it’s culturally separate from the rest of that county which is all built up and affluent except for Immokalee. Might as well be Mainland Monroe.

This is so wrong