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.
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.
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.
