Fort Myers is a gateway to the Southwest Florida region and a major tourist destination within the state.

The winter estates of Thomas Edison ("Seminole Lodge") and Henry Ford ("The Mangoes") are major attractions.

[11] Following European contact, Spain had colonial influence in Florida, succeeded by Great Britain and lastly the United States.

During the Second Seminole War, between 1835 and 1842, the U.S. Army operated Fort Dulaney at Punta Rassa, at the mouth of the Caloosahatchee River.

Major David E. Twiggs, then stationed at Fort Brooke (present day-Tampa), gave orders for two companies of artillery to "select a suitable place for the establishment of a post and immediately throw up such light works as may secure [their] stores, and remove from the Indians any temptation to which [their] isolated position may give rise.

[15] The fort was named for Brevet Colonel Abraham Charles Myers, quartermaster for the Army's Department of Florida and future son-in-law of Major Twiggs.

[16] It covered about 139 acres (56 ha), and soon had 57 buildings, including a two-story blockhouse that was pictured in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, and a 1,000-foot-long (300 m) wharf at which ships could dock.

[17] During the American Civil War, Confederate blockade runners and cattle ranchers were based in Fort Myers.

[18] The United States Army set up a camp on Useppa Island, near the entrance to Charlotte Harbor, in December 1863.

Beyond the principal cause for occupying the fort of providing support for Union sympathizers and local residents disaffected with Confederate taxation and conscription, the fort provided access to the large cattle herds in southern Florida, support for the blockade of the southwest Florida coast being conducted by the U.S. Navy, and a haven for any escaped slaves in the area.

[23] Solomon argues that Brevet Brigadier General Daniel Phineas Woodbury, commandant of the District of Key West and the Tortugas, intended that action to be an irritant to the Confederacy.

[25] The Union achieved control of the full length of the Mississippi River after the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863.

[28] The Battle of Fort Myers was fought on February 20, 1865, in Lee County, Florida, during the last months of the American Civil War.

The Fort Myers community was founded after the American Civil War by Captain Manuel A. Gonzalez on February 21, 1866.

[30][31] When the U.S. government abandoned the fort following the Civil War, Gonzalez sailed from Key West to found the community.

[33] Gonzalez settled his family near the abandoned Fort Myers, where he began the area's first trading post.

He traded tobacco, beads, and gunpowder, and sold otter, bobcat, and gator hide to the neighboring Seminole.

[2] In 1885, inventor Thomas Alva Edison was cruising Florida's west coast and stopped to visit Fort Myers.

Edison also enjoyed local recreational fishing, for which Fort Myers had gained a national reputation.

This luxury hotel attracted tourists and established Fort Myers nationally as a winter resort destination.

With the railroad came the need for more unskilled labor and the arrival of a more uneducated workforce, compared to many African Americans who had already resided in town, some of whom had been tradespersons, vendors, and landowners.

These more middle-class black citizens, as well as the new African-American laborers, were increasingly pressured to move to the segregated area that would become known as Safety Hill.

This area of town, as can be seen by contemporary photographs, had a lower quality of houses and street surfaces.

Originally a vaudeville house, Edison viewed films here for the first time with friends Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone.

In 1927, the three men contributed $25,000 each, and created the Edison Botanic Research Corporation in an attempt to find a solution to this problem.

Through Edison's efforts, the royal palms lining Riverside Avenue (now McGregor Boulevard) were imported and planted.

Ford, Firestone, and Edison were leaders in American industry and part of an exclusive group titled "the Millionaires' Club".

[44] In 1947, Mina Edison deeded Seminole Lodge to the city of Fort Myers, in memory of her late husband and for the enjoyment of the public.

Reflecting the June to September wet season, Fort Myers has 89 days annually in which a thunderstorm is close enough for thunder to be heard, the most in the nation.

Page Field is a small general aviation airport whose primary traffic consist of smaller aircraft.