Smallwood Store marks 100 years as Everglades landmark

Ted Smallwood Store has withstood the test of time, flanked by mangroves among the Ten Thousand Islands and perched south of the southernmost city in Collier County, overlooking Chokoloskee Bay. 

On Jan. 23–24, the store marked the centennial of when C.S. “Ted” Smallwood completed a major renovation to elevate the structure he first built in 1906 as a trading outpost and post office on Chokoloskee Island, which lacked road access until 1956. 

In 1924, Smallwood realized the building would not survive future storm surges unless it was raised. He completed the project in January 1926, lifting the floor about 7 feet above ground level — an engineering decision that has preserved the structure for a century. 

“Another leading example of sustainability and resiliency in Florida architecture and building buildings on edge conditions, where water meets land,” said Woody Hanson, a Fort Myers-based property appraiser, historian and part-time employee at the Smallwood Museum, located within the building. 

“The ecology of edges. Ted Smallwood was brilliant. It’s still here. Resiliency and stability.” 

Smallwood Store was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, less than a decade after the designation was established. 

“From a historical standpoint, this was an outpost of Florida’s last frontier,” Hanson said. “This was where Florida Seminole and Miccosukee Indian tribes brought alligator hides and pottery, thornbird feathers and traded with Mr. Smallwood for coffee, flour, staples, cloth to make clothing and so forth. It was a multicultural center. 

“Boats met wagons and people. It’s also the place where [alleged serial killer] Ed Watson was shot and killed. There’s an epic story about it by Peter Matthiessen, Killing Mister Watson.” 

Smallwood’s decision to elevate the building, combined with one of his children’s habit of preserving items, helped keep the store’s artifacts intact for decades. 

Smallwood’s own horn, made from a conch shell, has likely been inside the building for 100 years, said Lynn McMillin, Smallwood’s granddaughter and owner of the property. She operates Smallwood Store, now a museum and gift shop, both open daily except Christmas and Easter. 

Admission is $5. Inside, the building resembles a time capsule from the 1920s through the mid-1970s, housing items that reflect life in the remote outpost, including a land-surveying machine, a coffee grinder patented in 1873, pharmaceuticals, sodas, groceries, tools, books, typewriters, Native American artifacts and more. 

“It’s just Old Florida down here,” said Michael Wilson, 49, who relocated from Louisville, Kentucky, three years ago. “I just love the history down here.” 

The adjacent Tigertail Gift Shop sells books, T-shirts and souvenirs. 

“It’s an important part of Florida history,” McMillin said. “There’s not much left in this area that has stood the test of time. Especially when we get one of those hurricanes.” 

At least seven hurricanes have sent storm surge to the building’s floor level, but the store has survived them all, with hurricanes Donna in 1960 and Irma in 2017 delivering the highest water levels. 

“To be honest with you, I wasn’t really sure it would make it through Hurricane Irma,” McMillin said. “That was the biggest hurricane I had ever been through. It beat on us for 24 hours. It was 57 years to the day after Donna hit. 

“The docks didn’t fare so well. But that’s usually what happens is the dock goes away, and we rebuild them.” 

Mallory McMillin, 38, daughter of Lynn and Gary McMillin, said the museum likely would not have survived had her great-grandfather not elevated the building. 

“The water came over the floor and washed the floors out during Hurricane Irma,” she said. “Everything would have been completely ruined, for sure.” 

Gary and Mallory McMillin operate Smallwood Boat Tours, which offers guided excursions through the Ten Thousand Islands for $50 an hour per person. 

Tours include visits to fishing spots, such as “grandma’s kitchen,” dolphin pods that often surf boat wakes, and Sandfly Island, which features a one-mile hiking trail. 

“The dolphins are my favorite thing,” Mallory McMillin said. “I also like walking where my grandfather was born. It’s kind of weird to think that people lived on those islands back then and married people from the other islands. Different times.” 

Lynn McMillin, born in 1956 — the year the bridge connecting Everglades City to Chokoloskee Island opened — has spent her entire life on the island. 

“It was the hub of the community,” she said of the store. “There wasn’t much between Key West and Fort Myers back then. The mail boats would come out of Tampa to deliver here. 

“Everybody who lived out in what we called the Ten Thousand Islands, which we now call Everglades National Park, you know they either fished, farmed or hunted, to make a living out here. They would come out to trade and get the mail. It was one-stop shopping.”