The roads in the lives of sisters Barbara Daniels and Arita Parker have always led back to the Tamiami Trail.
The Trail took Daniels to Everglades City in 1928 when she was six weeks old and the road itself was nearly that young. For all but three years of her life, Daniels has lived within a few dozen miles of the Trail. For a time, she ran a convenience store along the road near Halfway Creek and named it “Anhinga” after a bird that populates the Everglades.
“I tell people I came with the Tamiami Trail,” Daniels said. “And I did.”
Ribbon-cutting ceremonies for the Trail, one of the most ambitious projects in Florida’s history, were held on April 25, 1928 — 80 years ago Friday.
By the time Parker came around — “I was born in the mid-30s and that’s all I’m going to tell you,” she said — the Trail had established itself as the connection between Florida’s east and west coasts. In 1955, she married and moved away, living in both Tampa and Fort Myers. When she was widowed 16 years ago, Parker came back.
Now the sisters live in a house Parker bought four years ago in Copeland, 2.5 miles from the Trail. They moved in together after Daniels lost her husband, too.
Their father, J. Ivan Hoffman Sr., came to what was known as the town of Everglades in 1927. Hoffman was 26 years old and moved along with his wife from Fort Myers to work as an electrician for Barron Gift Collier. Hoffman’s brothers were already carpenters employed by Collier. At the time, the New York industrialist was finishing up the construction of the single longest and hardest stretch of the Trail, dynamiting, hacking and swatting his way through the Everglades to complete what would become a 275-mile stretch of roadway connecting Tampa and Miami — hence the name “Tamiami.”
For his trouble, Collier got some value for the huge swath of land he owned and had the county named after him. For his trouble, Hoffman got a job in a booming company town and a life for his wife and five children.
“It’s not just about my grandfather,” said Barron “Barry” Collier, III, 50, who will be reading a speech of his namesake during anniversary celebrations this weekend in Everglades City. “It’s about all these people who made this dream come to a reality.”
Everglades City was built to house many of Collier’s workers. Until it was ravaged by Hurricane Donna in 1960, the town was the county seat and main site for commerce. Daniels and Parker benefitted from the trolley, buses and well-done landscaping.
“We didn’t even feel the Depression in Everglades City,” Parker said. “Dad always said, ‘That little town just kept on, keeping on.’ This was a company town and Collier took care of it.”
Their father worked in the town for 15 years before going to Copeland to run its power plant. Every afternoon in Everglades City, he would go around and turn on transformers so the street lights would burn. When Hoffman could get away from his job — and he wasn’t really supposed to leave the town — he enjoyed turkey hunting off the Trail.
Things are a little different in Everglades City today, but the Trail, at least between Naples and Miami, hasn’t changed that much, Daniels and Parker said. There wasn’t commerce along that stretch then, and there isn’t really any now.
The Trail is familiar to the sisters and reminds them how much they enjoyed growing up in the town. That’s the case, despite the mosquito swarms so thick they were afraid to open their mouths on the way to the movie theater.
Years ago, when the family visited relatives in Fort Myers they came back on the Trail. They called it the “homestretch” when they saw the light on Everglades City’s water tower and smelled the mangrove mud as Naples turned into their hometown.
“I guess it’s those memories,” Parker said, “that brought me back here to live.”
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© 2008 The E.W. Scripps Co.
