An old icehouse dating back to the 1920s was remodeled inot this weekend fish camp for family and friends.

On the south side of Fakahatchee Bay, deep in the Florida Everglades, is a set of very old pilings. Nautical charts reveal little about the site, labeling it simply as “ruins.” One source notes there’s pretty good redfish and snook action here.

I’ve always known those pilings had stories to tell. This year, I set out to record some of them. I spent a considerable part of my youth on Fakahatchee Bay, boating, fishing and learning about life at a wilderness outpost steeped in Florida history.

It started in the 1920s, when a group of industrious men began placing two sets of pilings in the mud on the south side of Fakahatchee Bay. The location was only a few hundred yards from the fishing community on Fakahatchee Island at the mouth of Fakahatchee Pass. The pilings would support two structures, the southernmost being a fish house with two walk-in iceboxes to hold fish (presumably, mostly mullet) for transport to Everglades City. The second structure slightly to the north was gone prior to 1948. I assume it housed workers for the fish house and wonder if it was a victim of the 1935 hurricane that devastated South Florida. On the east side of the fish house was a large sliding door with a boom used for loading ice and unloading boxes of fish.

During the late ’20s through the early to mid ’40s, a thriving fishing community developed on Fakahatchee Island. The community included the well-documented cemetery, numerous homes and even a schoolhouse. There were two families still living on the island in the early ’50s. Today, the island is uninhabited.

Fish stored in the ice house were picked up twice weekly and taken to Everglades City. The Atlantic Coast Line railroad had completed a line into Everglades City in the ’20s. This last stretch was called the “Deep Lake Railroad,” 14 miles long and eventually connected at Haines City to the lines to the major metropolitan areas of the north. This link to the northern markets was most prosperous during the Great Depression that began in 1929. The line eventually closed in the mid ’50s and the Seafood Depot restaurant now sits in the area of the old station (it’s a nice place to eat when you visit Everglades City).

In 1948, a jockey named Albert Snider rode a horse named Citation to victory in the Flamingo Stakes at Hialeah Race Track. Sadly, it was the last race he would ever run as six days later he went fishing on Florida Bay with two friends and never returned. No one knows what happened on the fateful night of March 5, 1948, when a ferocious storm rocked the Everglades with torrential rain and 50 mph winds. A huge search-and-rescue effort failed to locate the men. Footprints were found on a beach near Everglades City and the search expanded. My father was involved in the search at that time and hired a local guide for assistance. The skiff was found eight days later overturned on an island 10 miles south of Everglades City. A friend of Al Snider’s named Eddie Arcaro eventually rode the horse Citation and won the Triple Crown.

Pilings, as seen today, were all that remained after a lightning strike 1964. The camp was unoccupied at the time of the fire.

It was during this search effort that my father returned and talked of seeing flamingos and an abandoned fish house in Fakahatchee Bay. (The flamingos actually turned out to be spoonbills that I will discuss later.)

Up until this time we had spent many weekends and summer vacations fishing out of Gordon’s Pass Fish Camp in Naples. We fished primarily spring and fall for mackerel and snook in the summers. Both could be sold at the time, which helped offset the cost of the trips. We would round up fiddler crabs on sheets and collect a garbage can full to use with canepoles for sheepshead. It was a great life, but as the Naples area became more crowded (by my father’s standards at the time) the remoteness of that abandoned fish house in Fakahatchee Bay was too alluring to ignore. He was able to trace its ownership to Riggs Fish Company in Fort Myers. He, my uncle Tom and two close friends leased the facility for a short period and eventually purchased it in 1950.