Historic Bonita Springs
The temperatures were a bit cooler today, but you would
never know it by looking at the great blue heron that frequents the lake behind our
lanai.
Our mission today was to take a walking tour with the
Hausers in Historic Bonita Springs.
A seven stage multi-geocache was created at the end of
January and the four of us were anxious to take this tour. At each stage, we
were required to find information that is used to determine the GPS coordinates
for the location of the final physical container.
Stage 1 began at the site of the Liles Hotel, a
hotel-campground complex that catered to the fish and game tourists in the late
1920's.
In the 1940's, individual cottages were added. Some of those cottages have been moved behind the hotel and are now rented as studios to local artists.
The present building, a reconstruction of the original
hotel, is occupied by a city government department and contains pictures, exhibits
and information on Bonita Springs history.
At this first stage, we had to count the number of
starfish that decorated the walls along the outside fountain.
On the hotel grounds was an old water tower that had been
relocated to this site to help preserve some of the history of Bonita Springs.
From the water tower, we had to look around for a work of
art, entitled “Slices of Heaven”, that depicted fruit associated with Florida. Information
for Stage Two was the number of pieces of fruit.
Stage 3 took us to the Everglades Wonder Gardens which is
claimed to be Florida’s oldest attraction park. What began 77 years ago as a
collection of reptiles and wildlife has now become a non-profit organization
that is a refuge for rescued wildlife and an exhibit of worldwide trees and vegetation.
We did not tour the gardens, as we only had to get information off the large
sign.
Phases 4 and 5 took us to murals depicting many historical
elements of the town’s history. We learned that in the 1870’s government
surveyors camped along the waterway now known as the Imperial River. After the
crew left, the site became known as Survey. Further down in time, a developer
had the name changed to Bonita Springs in an effort to have a more appealing
name for investors. Bonita was his daughter’s name. We had to count the number
of windows on the Dome Restaurant in one mural and ascertain the artist’s phone
number in the other.
Phase 6 took us to the Shangri-La Inn Resort & Spa,
which was originally built in 1921 and known as the Heitman Hotel. The 25 room
hotel was built to give potential buyers a place to stay while their houses
were being constructed. Besides being an inspiration for the city’s name, the
source of sulfuric water on the property became a marketing focus.
We had to locate a huge tree with protruding roots on the
property and determine the scientific name for it.
Often we have a bit of concern when completing a
multi-stage cache because just one wrong piece of information or errors in
calculating information can result in GPS coordinates that direct us to an
entirely wrong place. However, even though the four of us have been retired for
several years now, our collective minds of an engineer, an accountant, a
para-legal and a school teacher have not been completely retired. We were happy
to find the final physical cache exactly where we expected it to be.
Along our tour we saw some other interesting sites. A tree located in Riverside Park is named “The
Freedom Tree” and is dedicated to LCDR Roger Emrich and all prisoners of war
and missing in action. I thought this was a very nice way to remember these
brave military personnel who sacrificed so much for all of us.
A statue of a boy with a hoop was in the park.
Lords of the Forest sculpture inspired me to engage in some child’s play
We enjoyed spending an extended period of time in this
beautiful town, seeing a variety of structures and artwork while learning so
much history. It was better than reading a history book.
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