Barron Collier made his fortune in advertising, then spent it connecting southwest Florida to the world. He financed the completion of the Tamiami Trail through the Everglades and built the infrastructure for what became one of Florida’s most prosperous regions.
A cluster of white concrete domes once rose from the shallow waters off Cape Romano, looking like a lunar colony. For 40 years, the Dome Home was one of Florida’s strangest and most photographed structures before the ocean finally claimed it.
Deep in Collier County, an 85,000-acre swamp shelters ghost orchids, Florida panthers, and the only forest on Earth where bald cypress and royal palms share a canopy. Welcome to the Fakahatchee Strand.
Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief follows plant dealer John Laroche into the Fakahatchee Strand, where he poached rare ghost orchids with a band of Seminoles and a legal theory nobody saw coming.
Since 1949, Naples has hosted the Swamp Buggy Races at the Mile O’ Mud, where custom-built machines blast through standing water at speeds topping 100 mph.
Deep in the Everglades, Florida’s legendary Skunk Ape has inspired decades of sightings, a roadside research headquarters in Ochopee, and even a failed state law to protect it.