An Underground Shanty Town

In our last presentation, we had a small section about shanty towns. One we remembered hearing about, but never had the time to talk about in the presentation, was the underground shanty city in Freedom Tunnel.
The train tunnel was built in the 1930s under the west side of Manhattan so there could be development room above ground. Since the automobile and trucking boom never slowed down in that era, the tunnel soon became abandoned. The homeless in NYC then moved into the tunnel, numbering in the easily hundreds. The residents also decorated the walls in artwork/graffiti, including a recreation of Goyas Third of May and chiaroscuro style study of the Venus de Milo. In 1991 Amtrack reopened the tunnel for their use, bulldozing the shelters. Here are some pictures from an urban explorer journey of the artwork that still remains in the tunnel.

http://memoryleak.co.cc/2009/08/26/the-freedom-tunnel/

A pool of pictures from the tunnel:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/freedomtunnel/pool/

What remains of the Third of May mural
A plaque in the tunnel stating the beginning of construction/eviction.

The Cottage

On February 10th, we went to the Fort Myers Beach Cottage and learned about what the area was like in decades past. Our host grew up in the area and has lived a large part of her life in the area, sharing her experiences and preserving the history of the town. After her presentation, we tried some Grape Jelly and then hit the nature trail.




This was the giant water bug that our host showed us. Anne wanted nothing to do with this monstrosity of an insect.

We saw these Resurrection Ferns all around us on the nature trail, but mostly growing on trees

We were hoping to find some Sea Grape berries along the trail ( we loved the sea grape jelly our host allowed us to try!) but all we found were the berrie free plants

A handy sign we found that explains the different types of Mangrove trees.
A Red Mangrove Tree by the bay

We saw several Black Mangroves but none of those pictures turned out. Here is an example of one taken from http://www.finexpeditions.com

A White Mangrove

Our Lovely Historian, who grew up in the area and has lived a large part of her life at Fort Myers Beach

A small Cuban Anole Lizard. The only animal we saw on the trip

A Cabbage Palm

Next Trip!

We are all excited for the future aquatic trip! At our last field trip, we saw a video about manatees and we recently found this video which ties our future trip to the ocean and the movie about manatees together.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVr2G5enWiQ

First Field Trip

On this first field trip we went to the Calusa Nature Center. Here we saw a short film in the planetarium about Manatee in Lee County along with several animals from the area on display in a museum.
On the trail we ran into several of the local plants and wildlife.
















Some Beauty Berries
















The Calousa resident Bald Eagle.















A Monarch Butterfly in the butterfly house.

A sleeping Possum.

This Bobcat was rescued after being kept as an illegal pet.

Brazilian Pepper

Quill Airplant

Cypress Knee

Poison Ivy.




















Slash Pine




















Here is a Red Maple Tree.
















Here is one of the two American Alligators in their alligator pond.





















Some Saw Palmetto.