Trip to Downtown

I went downtown twice Thursday, once for colloquium and later for lunch and getting my bus pass. Downtown Fort Myers is a pretty historic place to go to as memorials of historic commerce are displayed along the streets of the city. I learned that materials that were grown in the forests nearby the city were used for important inventions such as Thomas Edison using bamboo to create light bulbs. I also learned that Fort Myers was the only Union city in the south around Civil War time which could explain its hospitality around the area being better than other Florida cities. It was a city where Edison, Henry Ford, and Harvey Firestone vacationed and thusly was honored in a statue called "Uncommon Friends". It was also where Billy Bowlegs was caught and exiled to New Orleans as a result of the Army trying to catch Indians and deport them to New Orleans as a result of trying to force the Seminoles out of Florida. Fort Myers is not a big city but a historic one and there is more history to come that will occur in the city.