FLORIDA SEEN

Into the Wild

Images from a father and son’s Southwest Florida explorations in the early 1900s.

Photography by Julian A. Dimock, text by Pam Daniel

Thunderous clouds build over the Ten Thousand Islands in August 1908.

At the beginning of the 20th century, South Florida was remote and sparsely settled. Only 10,000 people, including Anglos and Seminoles, lived in the region between Lake Okeechobee and the southern coast of the state. Below the tiny frontier town of Fort Myers stretched a vast wilderness, including Big Cypress Swamp, the Everglades and the Ten Thousand Islands, an infinity of small mangrove islands edging Florida Bay. Unknown, uncomfortable, and sometimes dangerous, the region seemed unlikely to attract a pair of sophisticated New York financial executives.

Yet in spring of 1904, father and son financiers A.W. and Julian Dimock decided to explore Southwest Florida and made the arduous journey from Manhattan to Marco Island by steamboat, train and mail boat. They fell in love with what they discovered.

The Dimocks’ 37-foot houseboat, the Irene, in calm Gulf waters in 1906, during a five-month trip exploring the Ten Thousand Islands.

A worker boils down sugar cane to make syrup at Henderson Creek in Rookery Bay in February 1905. A.W. moves in for a close-up of a pair of young blue herons at the Harney River in May 1906.

Julian often photographed Southwest Florida settlers, including the R.W. Cox family aboard their canoe in 1910.

Over the next 10 years, the Dimocks made 10 forays into the Florida wild, sailing along the coast on their houseboat, Irene, which towed small boats they used to explore inland rivers, swamps and Seminole settlements, camping out for weeks at a time. Some of their trips took place during the stifling summers, when dark clouds of biting mosquitoes would descend at dusk. Undeterred by hardships and misadventures, the two pronounced the region a land of “enchantments,” with Julian taking photographs that were featured in articles his father wrote for well-known Northern magazines.

A.W. moves in for a close-up of a pair of young blue herons at the Harney River in May 1906.

During a 52-day expedition in 1908, the Dimocks caught 334 tarpon, and Julian mastered the art of photographing the fish in mid-leap. This photo, taken off Boca Grande, appeared on the cover of A.W.’s Book of the Tarpon.

Exploring the tangled mangrove “thickets,” as they called them, along Marco Island in June 1904.

By the end of their last trip, Julian had some 2,000 photographs, all on glass negatives. These striking images capture the dramatic landscapes they explored as well as the settlers and creatures they encountered. After the Dimocks died, Julian’s negatives ended up at New York’s American Museum of Natural History, where they were filed away and largely forgotten. In 1978, the late Nina Root, director of the museum’s research library, came across them. Root went on to write articles and several books about the Dimocks’ explorations, including, with co-author Jerald T. Milanich, Enchantments, Julian Dimock’s Photographs of Southwest Florida, from which the images on these pages are taken.

Photographs courtesy of the Research Library, American Museum of Natural History, New York City. Enchantments, Julian Dimock’s Photographs of Southwest Florida, by Jerald T. Milanich and Nina J. Root, can be ordered from University Press of Florida.