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FORT MYERS
, fifty miles south, may lack the elan of Sarasota, but it's nonetheless one of the up-and-coming communities of the southwest coast. Fortunately, most of its recent growth has occurred on the north side of the wide Caloosahatchee River, which the town straddles, allowing the traditional center, along the waterway's south shore, to remain relatively unspoiled.
Once across the river, US-41 strikes
downtown
Fort Myers, picturesquely nestled on the water's edge. Here, the
Fort Myers Historical Museum
, 2300 Peck St (Tues-Sat 9am-4pm; $2.50), provides thorough insights into the town's past, including the exploits of Dr Franklin Miles, the local man who developed Alka Seltzer.
In 1885, six years after inventing the light bulb,
Thomas Edison
collapsed from exhaustion and was instructed by his doctor to find a warm working environment or face an early death. Vacationing in Florida, the 37-year-old Edison bought fourteen acres of land on the banks of the Caloosahatchee and cleared a section of it to spend his remaining winters (he lived to be 84) at what became the
Edison Winter Home
, 2350 McGregor Blvd, a mile west of downtown (Mon-Sat 9am-5pm, Sun noon-5pm; guided tours every half-hour; $12; an extra $2 allows you entry into the Ford Winter Home). The tours begin in the gardens, planted with such exotics as African Sausage trees and wild orchids. The house (which you can glimpse only through the windows), though, is an anticlimax, its plainness probably due to the fact that Edison spent most of his waking hours inside the
laboratory
, attempting to turn the latex-rich sap of
Solidago edisonii
(a strain of goldenrod weed he developed) into rubber. However, when the tour reaches the engrossing
museum
the full impact of Edison's achievements becomes apparent: a design for an improved ticker-tape machine provided him with the funds for the experiments that led to the creation of the phonograph in 1877, and financed research that resulted in the incandescent light bulb. Here, too, you'll see some of the ungainly cinema projectors derived from Edison's Kinetoscope - which brought him a million dollars a year in royalties from 1907. Next door, the uninspiring
Ford Winter Home
, bought by Henry Ford in 1915, is open for viewing (tours as for Edison Home). The banyan tree outside the ticket office is the largest tree in the state, grown by Edison from a seedling.
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