Museum
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A trading post on stilts over Chokoloskee Bay, still stocked with what it sold, and the spot where Edgar Watson was shot in 1910.
Photo: olekinderhookCC BY 3.0
At the southern end of Chokoloskee, where the road gives out, a long wooden building sits on pilings above the bay with a porch running its full length. It has been there since 1917, and almost everything inside it has been there nearly as long.
C.S. "Ted" Smallwood came to Chokoloskee as a settler in 1897 and became postmaster in 1906, running the post office out of his house. The building you walk into went up in 1917, raised on pilings against the water that periodically comes through this island. For decades it was everything at once: general store, post office, and trading post where Seminole families brought hides, plumes and pelts and left with cloth, tools, coffee and shot. It was the point where a frontier economy touched the outside world, and for people living at Chatham Bend or Lostmans River it was the nearest thing to a town.
It has been a museum since 1989, when Ted's granddaughter Lynn Smallwood-McMillin reopened it, and it is still in the family. What makes it remarkable is that it was not curated so much as stopped. The shelves carry original stock in original packaging. The ledgers are there, with the accounts of people whose descendants still live on the island. The scales, the cases, the counter, the post office cubbyholes — all original, all in place, in a room that smells of old wood and salt.
The National Register of Historic Places added it on 24 July 1974.
And then there is the thing that brings most visitors. On 24 October 1910, three days after a hurricane, Edgar J. Watson rowed to this store and was shot dead by a crowd of local men on the ground in front of it. That killing has been argued over for a century, and the store is where it happened.
From Marco Island, take San Marco Road (CR-92) east to US-41, turn east, then south onto SR-29 through Everglades City and over the Chokoloskee Bridge. Follow the road to the southern end of the island and turn towards the water on Mamie Street. Allow about an hour.
From Naples it is roughly an hour and a half; from Miami, a little over two hours west on the Tamiami Trail.
There is parking beside the store on gravel and grass. In February the few spaces near the water fill on a good day.
Arriving by boat is historically accurate and still done — the store sits directly on Chokoloskee Bay and has served as a landing point for tours into the Ten Thousand Islands. Confirm arrangements with the store or your operator rather than assuming a public dock.
The interior is a single long room, wooden throughout, with the counter down one side and shelving to the ceiling.
What sits on those shelves is the point. Tinned goods in labels nobody has printed in eighty years. Bolts of cloth. Traps, tools, lamp parts, patent medicines, boxes of shot. The brass post office boxes with their small glass windows. Scales for weighing hides. The whole apparatus of a store that had to supply everything because there was no second shop within a day's travel.
Alongside the stock are the ledgers and photographs, which are the more affecting half of the visit. Accounts written in a clear hand, names that still appear on mailboxes three hundred yards away, and portraits of people standing on this porch a hundred years ago looking directly at you.
Read the panels rather than skimming them. The store's interpretation is unusually good on the Seminole trade, on what the plume trade did to this coast's bird populations, and on daily life in a settlement with no road, no electricity and no doctor.
Allow an hour. There is a small shop, and the porch over the water is worth ten minutes on its own.
Edgar J. Watson farmed sugar cane at Chatham Bend, deep in the Ten Thousand Islands, and hired labour that had a way of not being seen again. Nobody ever proved anything. He was never tried for any killing.
In October 1910 a hurricane wrecked the coast. Three days after it passed, a hand who had fled Chatham Bend reached Chokoloskee with a story about bodies in a shallow grave. When Watson rowed to the Smallwood Store on 24 October, a crowd of local men was waiting on the shore with shotguns. Watson's own gun had been soaked and misfired. He was shot dead where he stood, hit many times over.
No inquest assigned blame. The men who did it went home, and the community closed around the event for the rest of the century, which is part of why the story has the hold it does.
It has since been retold many times — most influentially in Peter Matthiessen's Watson novels, which are fiction working from the record rather than history. What the store offers is the physical fact: this porch, this shore, this water, and the distance between the landing and the spot where he fell, which is shorter than you expect.
Nothing else of this age survives on this coast, and the reason is a combination of two decisions and one accident of geology.
The first decision was the site. Chokoloskee is a Calusa shell mound standing around twenty feet above an Everglades that is otherwise at sea level, which is why people settled it and why storm surge that destroyed low-lying settlements elsewhere did not take this one.
The second was the pilings. Smallwood built high, over the water, so that surge passes under the floor rather than through the room.
The accident is that the building was never modernised out of existence. It closed as a store in the 1980s and reopened as a museum without being gutted, which is why the stock is original rather than reconstructed.
It has not been untouched. Hurricane Donna in 1960, Wilma in 2005, Irma in 2017 and Ian in 2022 all hit this coast, and the store has needed repair, fundraising and a long-running fight over access to it. The family has kept it open through all of that. If you value the place, buy something in the shop — that is how it is funded.
Where. 360 Mamie Street, at the southern end of Chokoloskee, about three miles south of Everglades City where SR-29 runs out. From Marco Island it is around an hour via San Marco Road, US-41 and SR-29.
Hours. The store has run to roughly 11am to 5pm daily, opening earlier — around 10am — in the winter months from December to April. Those are the published patterns rather than a guarantee: this is a small family-run museum on a remote island, and storms, staffing and season all affect it. Telephone or check ahead before driving an hour for it.
Admission. A small charge, in the region of five dollars per adult, with the proceeds going to the building's upkeep. Verify current pricing before you go, and carry cash as well as a card.
Time needed. An hour inside and on the porch. Combine it with Everglades City, the national park visitor center and a Ten Thousand Islands boat trip to make a proper day out of Marco.
Access. It is a raised historic wooden building. If steps are a problem, ask about access when you call rather than on arrival.
Operators run these trips past Smallwood Store, or stop there as part of a longer route. We list what the booking data supports — not everything that mentions the name.
Some links below go to Viator, our booking partner. We earn a commission on bookings made through them — at no extra cost to you, and with no influence on what we recommend.
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Straight-line distances, so allow more on the road — the island is long and has one main parkway.
Neighbourhood
A 150-acre Calusa shell mound at the end of the road, twenty feet above an Everglades that is otherwise at sea level.
1.5–8 hoursFree to visit the island. The Smallwood Store charges a small admission, and boat ramps charge to launch.0.3 mi away
Neighbourhood
Barron Collier's planned company town on the edge of the Everglades, still the land gateway to the Ten Thousand Islands.
4–8 hoursFree to visit the town. Boat tours, airboat rides and guides are charged separately.3.7 mi away
Wildlife
Thirty-five thousand acres of mangrove wilderness with one land trail, one observation tower and eighteen parking spaces.
1–4 hoursFree. No entry fee and no parking charge at the Marsh Trail.13.6 mi away
Park
6,430 acres of mangrove and royal palm hammock twenty minutes east of Marco, with the last Bay City walking dredge parked by the gate.
1.5–7 hoursA small per-vehicle entry fee in the usual Florida state park band, paid at the ranger station or honour box.18.3 mi away
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Both dates you will see are right about different things. Ted Smallwood settled on Chokoloskee in 1897 and became postmaster in 1906, running the post office and a trading business from his home. The building standing today, raised on pilings over Chokoloskee Bay, was built in 1917. So the business dates from 1906 and the structure from 1917. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on 24 July 1974.
He was shot dead outside it on 24 October 1910. Watson farmed cane at Chatham Bend in the Ten Thousand Islands and was long suspected of killing the labour he hired, though he was never tried. Three days after a hurricane, a hand who had fled his farm reached Chokoloskee with an account of bodies in a shallow grave; when Watson rowed to the store, armed local men were waiting. His storm-soaked gun misfired and he was shot many times. No inquest assigned blame.
It is open most days, typically from late morning to late afternoon, with an earlier opening of around 10am in the winter months. Admission has run at around five dollars per adult and goes towards the building's upkeep. Because this is a small family-run museum on a remote island, hours and pricing are not guaranteed to match anything published, so telephone or check before driving an hour from Marco Island. Carry cash as well as a card.
Yes, as part of a day rather than on its own. It is about an hour each way, and an hour inside covers it, so pair it with Everglades City, the national park's Marjory Stoneman Douglas Visitor Center and a Ten Thousand Islands boat trip. What makes it worth the drive is that it was stopped rather than restored: original stock on original shelves, the ledgers, the post office boxes, and a porch standing over the water where the island's best-known story happened.