Thomas Edison and Henry Ford among the original snowbirds: The rich going to Florida for the winters

FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) — Thomas Edison and Henry Ford are famous for their innovations in electricity generation and automobiles respectively, but they were also at the forefront of a massively popular trend in Florida: Rich people from up north spending the cold winter months in the Sunshine State.

Edison first visited Fort Myers in 1885 after a doctor suggested spending time in Florida’s warmer climate for health reasons, and he built a house along the Caloosahatchee River the next year. Ford made many visits to southwest Florida to see Edison and purchased the property next door in 1916.

Southwest Florida became their vacation spot, Edison and Ford Winter Estates marketing director Lisa Wilson said. Edison spent most of the year in New Jersey, while Ford lived in Michigan.

“They came down here to escape the cold like many snowbirds do today. But they worked when they were here, so it wasn’t just vacation time,” Wilson said.

Before spring breakers

Fort Myers was basically a group of farmers living in an abandoned military fort, using tallow lamps for light, when Edison first visited, Edison and Ford Winter Estates historian Isaac Hunter said.

“The following year after he built his home, he had a generator installed across the street,” Hunter said. “There were about 350 residents, almost all of them came over to the property to watch the lights get turned on.”

While Edison never powered the rest of the city, his illuminated home gave neighbors an appetite for electricity, Hunter said. About a decade later, a local business man bought a generator for his canning plant and eventually develop a rudimentary grid to power the city.

Edison’s first connection to Ford came in 1891, when Ford was working as an engineer at the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit, Hunter said. The job involved no direct contact with Edison, but they eventually met at a meeting in 1896. Ford left the company to further develop his automobile designs, but his admiration for Edison continued.

“Henry Ford was a huge fan of Thomas Edison, and as he started to work on automobiles and become a bigger, bigger name in the world, he continued to contact Thomas Edison, write letters, ask him advice,” Hunter said.

They became friends in 1914, when Edison invited Ford and his family to Fort Myers.

Friends and neighbors

As Edison, Ford and another visitor, naturalist John Burroughs, were getting acquainted in southwest Florida, they decided to go on a camping trip, setting off into the Everglades in a parade of Ford’s Model Ts.

“There weren’t roads. The Tamiami Trail, Alligator Alley did not exist in 1914,” Hunter said. “So they’re driving through Florida wilderness. They got about halfway out. Marshland, forest, they were miserable.”

They finished their camping trip at Edison’s estate. The trip may not have been a complete success, but it began a decade-long tradition of trips throughout the U.S. and led to Ford buying the property next door to Edison in 1916.

Harvey Firestone, founder of Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, later joined Edison, Ford and Burroughs, and the quartet became known as the Vagabonds. The trips gave the industrialists a chance to discuss business and eventually reach the conclusion that the U.S. needed its own source of rubber.

Where the rubber meets the road

Besides the obvious use of rubber in tires, it was used in practically all industrial manufacturing.

“All of these gentlemen, they used rubber every single day,” Hunter said.

The U.S. at the time had been purchasing latex and other botanical rubber supplies from overseas, but the disruption of that supply caused by World War I demonstrated how important it was for the U.S. to have its own source. And since rubber was made out of plants, Edison, Ford and Firestone concluded that southwest Florida would be an ideal place to grow and test many different plants.

They opened the Edison Botanical Research Laboratory in 1927 and tested over 17,000 different samples of rubber plants, Hunter said.

Edison eventually settled on goldenrod as the best natural source of latex. He envisioned farmers planting and harvesting the crop, but this never happened. Edison passed away in 1931, and the the lab shut down a few years later, around the time a petroleum-based synthetic rubber was developed, Hunter said.

“This process, especially in the 30s, was cheaper, faster, and it really took up the rubber production of the United States,” Hunter said.

A lasting legacy

Edison’s widow deeded his Florida property to the city of Fort Myers for public use in 1947 for $1, and it was opened for tours a short time later.

The neighboring Ford property was sold and occupied as a private residence for several decades until the city bought it in 1988. A nonprofit organization took over administration of the entire property in 2003 and oversaw a $14 million restoration project.

“Thomas Edison and Henry Ford really put this city on the map, and today it’s an international tourist destination,” Wilson said.

Visitors can explore a museum featuring some of Edison’s 1,093 patents, including the phonograph and the incandescent light bulb, along with the research lab and gardens.