Thomas Edison and Henry Ford: Early Florida "Snow Birds" There is also a nursery with plants available for sale that are increased from the initial stock. As early as 1885, Thomas Edison headed south to discover a calm winter retreat. Tickets can be acquired to visit the houses, the comprehensive gallery, or in combination. Thomas Edison and Mina continued to develop the property for many years, adding a swimming pool in 1910, a teahouse, lily pond, and also a boat dock into the Caloosahatchee River where family and friends took pleasure in boating, fishing as well as enjoying sundowns. Every one of the initial home furnishings included are on financing from the household to reveal exactly how the Edison's lived. The following year he returned with his new bride-to-be, Mina Miller Edison, and they began a yearly expedition to the house he constructed. When Firestone came to visit in 1925, he brought a four-foot banyan tree as a present for Edison. They valued the warmer winter season climate as well as the ability to take part in exterior quests. Henry Ford Becomes Edison's Next-door neighbor Edison took a trip to Ft Myers with 1931 as well as soon afterward, Henry Ford no much longer used his home. Mina, as well, was an avid garden enthusiast as well as she usually tended numerous yards around their residence. He located a stand of bamboo expanding on a water front home in Fort Myers, and given that bamboo was just one of the ideas he was examining for feasible use as a light bulb filament, he bought the home for $2,750. Checking out the homes one could think of the numerous conversations that occurred there and also the record that the walls consist of. The Firestone Banyan Tree