In a time when few dared to venture into the Everglades, Ted Smallwood staked a claim on an island called Chokoloskee. To this day, his legend lives on.

The land had been inhabited before: Calusa tribes once thrived in the area, and Seminoles were forced there from farther north by the U.S. government. Among the white settlers arriving in the late 1800s was Smallwood, who came from Georgia in 1897 and farmed tomatoes at first, then started a trading post out of his farmhouse in 1906. Around the same time, he became postmaster for the area.

In 1917, he built the Smallwood Store, which served as a center of commerce in the otherwise inhospitable area. Gladesmen or Seminoles would paddle miles through the Ten Thousand Islands to get to the store, trading furs, plumes or produce for medicine, food, books, cloth or basic necessities.

Smallwood died in 1951. But the store continued until 1982, even after it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. It shut its doors for a few years, but Smallwood descendants reopened it as a museum, basically untouched from when it closed, and it remains open to visitors to this day.