Seven Flivvers Made It

Story and artwork by Wilmer Richter

"Philadelphia is Wilmer S. Richter's home town. He was born and educated there, studied at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and has exhibited widely in that city. In 1947, however, he [moved] to Sarasota, Florida, to teach, started freelancing, [and is still there, living with his wife and three children.] Painting since he was eight, he is a pianist also as his father made him practice [...]  before allowing him to draw. " (Ford Times) 

Talk of a road through the trackless Everglades at the bottom of the Florida peninsula to connect Miami with Tampa had reached the survey stage in 1917, but entrance of the United States into World War I halted the little work that had been started at both the Miami and Fort Myers ends. This amounted to little more than cleared brush at each end and a line of surveyor's stakes. 

As almost nothing was known about conditions in the interior, a group of resourceful and venturesome men organized a motorcade from Fort Myers to Miami to revive interest in the project by proving the journey could be made. On April 4, 1923, the group, consisting of twenty-six men in ten cars, seven of them Model T Fords, left Fort Myers. These trail blazers required the entire day to do the first fifty-odd miles which was merely a scraped sand track with holes, soft places, stumps, and other obstacles with water-filled ditches on both sides. The only heavy car in the party caused so much delay that it had to turn back, leaving the seven Model T's and two cars of other makes to continue the jungle journey. 

At the end of the sand track they faced an unknown wilderness with only survey stakes for direction. Here two Seminole Indian guides joined the party. They were hired to find high or dry ground for the cars to follow and, with their knowledge of the wilds and fastnesses of the Everglades, to keep the party from traveling in circles. 

Into the quiet Everglades where the wild creatures were undisturbed came the roar and backfire of engines, mingled with the yells of many men as they struggle to advance with their mired cars, gaining only a few miles a day with the most back-breaking of labor.

The air was filled with startled birds making fantastic patterns across the skies, their shrill cries adding to the disturbance below. Deer and other game fled the area in noisy terror as the motorists chopped their way through thicket and woods. 

Several times the cars became so hopelessly bogged that men had to tramp many miles to towns near the Everglades where they could locate big-wheeled tractors to haul them to firmer ground. 

At time even the Indian guides, seeking higher, firmer ground, became confused and lost and would stumble back to the surveyed line again. One of the Seminoles, out hunting game, lost the party and never did return, presumably having made his way to an Indian village. 

Few of the trail-blazers were accustomed to manual labor and what had started out as a brief outing turned into something quite different. The little food and water they carried soon gave out and they were compelled to live on deer and other game the guides shot. They had to dig holes in the muck for their drinking water, waiting for the seepage to fill them. 

After a week without word from the party, the home-folks became alarmed for their safety and sent out a search plane which failed to spot them. The following day another plane from Miami located their smoke signal and made a dangerous landing bringing much needed supplies of food and gasoline. 

By now, having toiled in broiling sun and sudden showers that made travel even more terrible, they were nearing exhaustion but there was no going back now- it was forward or abandon the cars and walk. 

Pushing, shoveling, and at time practically lifting the cars over wet places, they arrived at the Miami end of the scraped road where, at last, they were able to clean off the Everglades muck and again look like civilized men. 

It took ten days of incessant toil to make the trip from Fort Myers to Miami but all seven of the Model T's had plowed through in the first motorcade to travel the route now known as the Tamiami Trail. The Fords returned home by going north on the east coast and crossing to Tampa.