In the first decade of the twentieth century, Julian Dimock and his father traveled throughout southwest Florida photographing the land, the people, and the waterways of this frontier Eden. The former Wall Street moguls turned gentlemen explorers published hundreds of articles documenting their journeys in Harper's, Field & Stream, and other periodicals, introducing Americans to the mysterious world of the Florida Everglades and its inhabitants. While photographer Julian was keenly interested in the isolated but culturally rich lives of the Seminole Indians, he was also drawn to the outcasts and wanderers, refugees and outlaws who had staked out hardscrabble lives far from the fledgling towns of Miami and Fort Myers. From their base camp in the then-undeveloped outpost of Marco Island, the Dimocks trekked through the swamps and savannahs of southwest Florida as few whites had ever done. They canoed the Ten Thousand Islands, the Everglades, and Big Cypress Swamp. They traveled overland by oxcart to reach hidden places, including Deep Lake Plantation and its historic citrus grove, the tiny Henderson Creek settlement on Rookery Bay, and America's southernmost bee tree. From their houseboat they photographed Chatham Bend, the island home of the notorious killer Edgar Watson. These vivid duotone reproductions from original glass negatives--rediscovered in 1978, nearly half a century after Dimock donated his collection to the American Museum of Natural History--preserve a rare and beautiful slice of history.
Jerald T. Milanich is curator emeritus of the Florida Museum of Natural History, contributing editor at Archaeology magazine, and the author or editor of many books. Nina J. Root, director emerita of the Research Library at the American Museum of Natural History, is the coeditor of Camera Man’s Journey: Julian Dimock’s South.