B is for Billy’s Creek

An Alphabet of Southwest Florida Places

There’s an old saying about land that goes “They ain’t making any more of it.” But Floridians, historic and contemporary, have taken that saying as a challenge, filling in swamp and marshland to build, build, build. Billy’s Creek, a five-mile tributary of the Caloosahatchee River in eastern Lee County, has been changed forever by the hand of man. Here’s some of that storied water’s history.

(Vintage postcard illustration)

Who Was Billy?

In 1933, Mr. and Mrs. J.B. Nalle hosted a large garden party at their home on Marion Street. Its lush, oak-covered grounds backed up to the crystalline Billy’s Creek. Part of the lore told to guests that day was that it was said to be the exact spot where Seminole Indian Chief Holato Micco/Billy Bowlegs camped with his warriors during the Third Seminole War.  

The U.S. Military came back to Fort Myers in 1850, and hostilities broke out a few years after, as Bowlegs and his men fought to claim the lands that the government had promised the Seminole Indians. After years of battle and negotiations, he and others of his tribe paddled up Billy’s Creek to the fort in May 1858 to relocate to Western lands.

(Seminole Indian Chief Holato Micco/Billy Bowlegs, 1852, from floridamemory)

Popular history says members of the Seminole tribe (except for a remnant band deep in the Big Cypress) left from Fort Myers for New Orleans on the steamer Grey Cloud. But there’s an important stop that’s missed in this tale: The steamer first went to Egmont Key to pick up the Seminole Indians who had been held in a prison camp there. Tribal historians say hundreds of tribe members, mostly women, children, and the elderly, were imprisoned at the camp and that many perished before being picked up for passage to “Indian Territory.” (Read more in Egmont Key: A Seminole Story https://stofthpo.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Egmont-Key-Digital-book-web.pdf)

Homes and Gardens

Rhode Island business magnate John Morgan Dean wasn’t the first prosperous Northerner to buy land on Billy’s Creek: Rose Cleveland, the president’s sister, picked up a couple of orange groves there in 1900. But Dean, with contractor Carl Roberts, was one of the first to see the potential of the swampy area as a subdivision.

Dean purchased acreage in 1901 but held off development until about 1913, when he hired a dredging crew to pump 150,000 cubic yards of sand from the riverbed to raise land along Billy’s Creek to a level of four to six feet above the creek. Dean’s crew also removed the environmentally essential mangroves that the Fort Myers Press called “an eyesore to the community.”

(First Street is one of the boundaries of Dean Park; vintage postcard illustration)

In 1915, a crew began constructing roads and infrastructure in what became the subdivision Dean Park. Historically, it is bounded by First Street and Palm, Michigan, and Evans avenues. Some of Fort Myers’ finest homes were built there before the real estate boom busted after 1925.

Many of the original homes are still standing, including the winter home of Mina Edison’s New Jersey friends James and Grace Elms on Palm Avenue. Their home backed up to Billy’s Creek, where they kept their cruiser Lady Grace docked. The couple were the stars of the city’s fifth annual garden show in 1939. According to the Fort Myers News-Press, the grounds were “rich with tropical growth from such faraway places as Borneo and Central Africa…” and had a pool stocked with 500 goldfish.

The City of Fort Myers recognized Dean Park as a historic district in the late 1990s. In 2013, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Draining the Swamp

Thanks to Margerie Stoneman Douglas’ book River of Grass, we understand how draining swamp and marshland in the Everglades has harmed the environment. We don’t always understand how human-made changes throughout Southwest Florida have harmed its waterways and the people and nature who depend on them.  

(In 1935, the Works Progress Administration undertook a large-scale draining project at Billy’s Creek, from floridamemory)

As Fort Myers and Lee County grew, more and more structures were plopped onto the Billy’s Creek floodplain, impeding the natural movement of the creek and tributaries feeding into it.

Water that old timers remember as crystal clear, full of blue crabs and young snook, is murky and bacteria-ridden today. The Southwest Florida Water Management District and the City of Fort Myers established a filter marsh at Billy Creek Preserve to improve water quality, and the not-for-profit organization Calusa Waterkeeper is holding government agencies accountable for the health of the creek. For more about organization’s Billy’s Creek Community Action Plan, visit Billy's Creek, Fort Myers - Calusa Waterkeeper.

Sneak Peek: Batter Up

Next week’s newsletter is all about baseball in Fort Myers!

(Ty Cobb, Thomas Edison, and Connie Mack, Fort Myers, 1927)