Downtown Fort Myers

On our last and final field trip for Colloquium we went to downtown Fort Myers. My very first reaction when being told we were going there was how in the world can we relate downtown Fort Myers to everything that we've past learned in this Colloquium course?! I didn't see it tying together. But, the trip proved me wrong. We first started off going to the farmers market. I have never been to a farmer's market but it was so quaint! There were all kinds of vegetables and foods. If we were able to stay a little longer, we would have seen many more types of foods being sold. After, we became being told by my professor about the old Indians tribes that used to inherit the downtown area. Who would've known the Calussahatchee Indians were the ones to do it! Another very interesting fact I brought back with me from the field trip was in 1885, Thomas Edison came to Fort Myers to get some bamboo. Before steel, Edison used bamboo as his filament for the light bulb. Along with Edison, Ford and Firestone were also those among living in downtown Fort Myers at the time. Last but not least, our professor showed us a mural that summed up everything of Fort Myers history. Each picture in it portrayed a different story. It was very beautiful.