Scrapbook: Koreshan Unity Settlement

Images from a magical place

I discovered the Koreshan Unity through a book by Allen Andrews, A Yank Pioneer in Florida (1948), before I knew anything about Cyrus Teed, his failed resurrection, or the hold that the failed utopia had on the local imagination. Later I became captivated by photos I saw of the Estero settlement, trying to imagine the spirit and whimsy of the people who built a cultural oasis in the wilderness. Some of my favorite images:

(Bamboo Landing at Koreshan Unity settlement in Estero, early 1900s, from Hanson Family Archives)

(Koreshan Unity orchestra at Bamboo Landing, early 1900s, from Florida Memory)

(Above, from Florida Memory, below, from FGCU digital archives, Koreshan children performing Bees in Flowerland at Bamboo Landing, c. 1908)

(Inside the Rustic Tea Garden on the Koreshan Unity grounds in Estero. Allen Andrews reported that on the June 1929 night that the country celebrated the 50th anniversary of the electric light, Mina and Thomas Edison dined at the tea garden by candlelight, having escaped a violent storm on Tamiami Trail. Photo Florida Memory.)

(Koreshan Unity orchestra performing inside the Art Hall, from FGCU digital archives)

(The Lion Fountain at the Koreshan Unity settlement, undated, from Hanson Family Archives)

(Above and below: Explanations of the Koreshan Unity belief, revealed to Cyrus Teed in a vision, that humanity lives inside the earth. Members of the settlement proved it to their satisfaction with an 1897 experiment with a “rectilineator” on beach-front land owned by General Walter Haldeman in Naples.)

(Florida Federation of Garden Clubs dedicated a historic marker at Koreshan State Park in April 1963; Mrs. Berne Davis, third from left, represented the club’s local district. From Florida Memory.)