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5 things: A July 4, 1776, history lesson, Cape Coral-style
On the night of July 4, 1776, a printer named John Dunlap, in Philadelphia, was up late hurriedly printing fliers. The fliers were copies of the Declaration of Independence.
They were to be rushed to each of the 13 colonies the next day. It seemed urgent to let the people in these colonies know that they had declared their independence from Great Britain, before, you know, Great Britain heard about it.
1. Obviously, Cape Coral did not exist 242 years ago. Florida, itself, and especially south Florida, had experienced little development. Florida had been a Spanish colony for 250 years, and English only 13 years. When Spain ceded Florida to Great Britain in 1763, Britain had divided the peninsula into the 14th and 15th colonies of East and West Florida.
2. Where Cape Coral is today was part of the colony of East Florida. (Don’t take my word for it. Look at the map.)
3. No towns down here yet. Not even a fort. The native Calusa Indians were gone, replaced by members of other native tribes, Creek and Yemasse from the colonies of Georgia and South Carolina, for example.
4. Nearby islands and mainland coastlines were still home to Cuban fishermen who had had seasonal fishing villages in south Florida for many years.
5. So, in 1776, Cape Coral was primitive, uninhabited land thick with pines, oak, cabbage palms, palmettos, rattlesnakes and mosquitoes. And while late into the night of July 4, the sounds you’d hear coming from a print shop in Philadelphia would be metal-type pieces chinking, in this wilderness that would someday be home to nearly 200,000 people, the only sounds you’d hear would be rustling of an opossum in the palmettos, maybe the soft grunting of wild hogs, a yipping of coyotes.
Cynthia Williams (email@example.com)