Ochopee is pretty easy to miss nowadays. Its main attraction is the nation’s smallest post office. But at the size of a small shed, that building is pretty easy to miss, as well.

At one time, though, Ochopee was actually a bustling farming community. Shortly after the Tamiami Trail connected the coasts in 1928, small communities started popping up roadside to support the growth of new businesses. The Gaunt family, farmers formerly of New Jersey, had purchased about 250 acres from Miami businessman James Franklin Jaudon in eastern Collier County and started growing tomatoes in what was essentially the middle of the Everglades.

The community soon had a general store, gas station and living quarters for laborers brought in from across the Southeast to work. By 1940, Gaunt’s company employed close to 1,000 people. The company employed many from the nearby Seminole tribe, and legend has it that the name of the community came from a rough translation of the Seminole word for farm: O-chopp-ee.

In 1953, fire swept through many of the buildings in town, including the general store that also housed the post office. The next day, a shed used to store irrigation pipes and hoses became a makeshift replacement (pictured, with postmaster Sidney Brown). 

The farms and families that once constituted Ochopee are gone, most of the land becoming part of the Big Cypress National Preserve. A few roadside restaurants and tourist attractions still stand along that stretch of road, including that old shed. It still serves as a functional post office, primarily servicing the Miccosukee and Seminole communities nearby.