Smallwood Store

Chokoloskee residents say the island has more ghosts than living people and that many of them visit Smallwood Store at night; the one most often named is Ed Watson, whom some say still inhabits the building, with many of the stories traced to founder Ted Smallwood's granddaughter, Lynn Smallwood McMillin. Visitors often describe an uneasy feeling near the building, and a paranormal group's account mentions whispers, objects moving on their own and sudden cold spots, though these are anecdotal; visitors are asked not to walk beneath the store. Smallwood Store is a real trading post and National Historic Landmark, built on stilts at the edge of the Everglades at the end of a dead-end road, and now run by Lynn Smallwood McMillin. In October 1910, planter Ed Watson — long suspected, though never convicted, of killing farm hands and not paying them — rowed into Chokoloskee three days after a hurricane and was shot dead on the dock here by a group of nearly thirty local citizens who believed he'd killed again; no coroner's inquest ever resolved who fired first, and no one was charged. The store, now a museum, is seasonal.