Fort Myers Florida — Retro Vintage History

What's with the City of Palms? Drive down McGregor Boulevard and you'll see where the name comes from — a corridor of royal palms, some near seventy-five feet now, running for miles toward downtown. Thomas Edison planted the first of them after he built his winter home on the Caloosahatchee in the 1880s, and the city took the trees as its name: the City of Palms. They've been replanted and replaced over the decades, but the boulevard's green colonnade leading down to the river is still the signature of Fort Myers. No other Florida city is named for its trees.

Fort Myers began as a fort. In 1850, during the Third Seminole War, the U.S. Army built a post on the south bank of the Caloosahatchee and named it for Colonel Abraham Myers. The land had been Calusa for thousands of years, and Seminole after that; the fort was part of the long, hard federal campaign to remove them. The garrison came and went — it served as a Union outpost and saw one of the southernmost land actions of the Civil War — and was finally abandoned. In 1866 the first civilian settlers moved into the empty buildings and started a town; they kept the old fort's name, and Fort Myers it stayed.

It stayed small and agricultural — cattle and citrus — until the winter of 1885, when Thomas Edison sailed up the Caloosahatchee, liked what he saw, and built a winter home he called Seminole Lodge. He spent decades wintering there, experimenting with plants and rubber in a riverside laboratory, and eventually talked his friend Henry Ford into buying the bungalow next door, The Mangoes. Their side-by-side estates on McGregor Boulevard turned a quiet river town into one of America's most famous winter colonies, and the Edison and Ford Winter Estates remain Southwest Florida's premier historic attraction — twenty-one acres of gardens and one of the largest banyan trees in the country.

The Royal Palm Hotel opened in 1898, the railroad reached town in 1904, and Fort Myers grew into the seat of Lee County. Downtown filled in along First Street — the brick storefronts, the 1908 Arcade Theatre, the old bank buildings — the district now revived and known as the River District. The royal palms Edison started spread up McGregor and through the historic neighborhoods of Edison Park and Dean Park, and the City of Palms settled into its place on the Southwest Florida coast. By the 1920s the Tamiami Trail had bridged the river and opened the road south, and the winter crowds kept coming for the climate Edison had advertised to the world.

The Caloosahatchee is the spine of all of it — the river that carried Edison's boat upstream and still defines the downtown edge, running west to San Carlos Bay and the Gulf. Around the city the subtropical landscape is its own draw: the manatees that gather in the warm water at Manatee Park each winter, the elevated boardwalks of the Six Mile Cypress Slough, and the lakes and gardens of Lakes Park, with the barrier islands just offshore. It is a working subtropical city wrapped around a historic core — the kind of place where a riverside laboratory and a cypress swamp sit a few miles apart.

Today Fort Myers is a city of nearly a hundred thousand, a snowbird and year-round hub on the Southwest Florida coast, anchored by the Edison and Ford Winter Estates and the revived River District downtown. The wider region took a hard blow when Hurricane Ian came ashore in Lee County in 2022, and the recovery has been long. The royal palms along McGregor still stand, and downtown's First Street still fills on a weekend evening.

Our Fort Myers logo carries the Florida alligator above “Florida Territory — Est. 1845,” the shared retro emblem of our Florida towns, drawn in worn black-and-white like an old woodcut crate label. The 1845 date marks Florida statehood, and the alligator is the through-line that links Fort Myers to every other Florida town we make. The detail that makes this one Fort Myers is the City of Palms — the royal-palm boulevard, the Caloosahatchee riverfront, and the winter-colony downtown that grew up between them.

Fort Myers is the City of Palms — a Seminole-War fort on the Caloosahatchee that grew, beneath a corridor of royal palms, into Southwest Florida's great river town. Our Fort Myers designs gather that into wearable form. Wear the City of Palms. Wear the river and the royal-palm road.

Fort Myers, Florida — Travel Guide

Visiting Fort Myers Today

Fort Myers sits on the Caloosahatchee River in Southwest Florida, the seat of Lee County and the heart of the City of Palms. Expect the royal-palm corridor of McGregor Boulevard, a walkable downtown River District of shops and restaurants, the famous Edison and Ford estates, and easy access to the region's parks, gardens, and gulf-island gateways. It is sunny, historic, and relaxed, busiest in the winter season.

Estates, the River District & the Parks

For visitors looking for things to do in Fort Myers, Florida:

• Tour the Edison and Ford Winter Estates on McGregor Boulevard — historic homes, riverside laboratory, gardens, and the great banyan tree.
• Drive or stroll the McGregor Boulevard royal-palm allée, the avenue that named the City of Palms.
• Wander the downtown River District — First Street's brick storefronts, the 1908 Arcade Theatre, murals, and riverfront plazas.
• Watch the manatees gather in the warm water at Manatee Park each winter.
• Walk the elevated boardwalks of the Six Mile Cypress Slough Preserve through cypress wetlands.
• Relax at Lakes Park — paths, gardens, and paddle craft — or visit the historic Burroughs Home on the river.
• Time a winter visit for the Edison Festival of Light, the city's marquee February celebration.

Why People Visit Fort Myers

Fort Myers rewards travelers who want history, gardens, and the river rather than only a beach — the inventors' winter estates, the royal-palm boulevard, and a revived downtown on the Caloosahatchee. People come for the Edison and Ford estates and the City-of-Palms streetscape, for the manatees and cypress boardwalks, and for an easygoing Southwest Florida day where Gilded-Age history and subtropical nature sit side by side.

For deeper reading on the Fort Myers history described here — the Calusa homeland, the 1850 Third-Seminole-War fort and Colonel Abraham Myers, the 1866 first civilian settlement, the Edison and Ford winter colony and the McGregor Boulevard royal palms, and the growth of the River District — it may be useful to consult (1) the Southwest Florida Museum of History, (2) the Edison & Ford Winter Estates archives, (3) the Lee County Black History Society and local historical collections, (4) the State Library & Archives of Florida, and (5) the Florida Historical Society and the Lee County historic-preservation office. For travel and visitor information, it may be useful to contact (1) VISIT FLORIDA, (2) the Lee County Visitor & Convention Bureau (Fort Myers — Islands, Beaches and Neighborhoods), (3) the City of Fort Myers River District Alliance, (4) the Florida State Parks office, and (5) the City of Fort Myers Parks & Recreation department.