Wednesday, November 4, 2026
Serving Everglades City, Chokoloskee and surrounding communities
Though his topic couldn’t have been more topical, given the drama surrounding the Everglades City Airpark, museum manager Thomas Lockyear insists that his April 17 Thursday Talk program at Museum of the Everglades was planned months in advance.
“We program these way ahead of time,” Lockyear told a full room of attendees. "I have to have these out three, four months ahead of time. I never imagined for a minute that they would suddenly decide to explore the possibility of closing the airport, and I would be speaking on a hot-button political issue. It was not my intent to do that. ”
A story titled Citizens Rally to Save Everglades Airpark was front page news in the current Mullet Rapper, the popular hometown paper, as attendees settled into their seats to hear Lockyear.
For the record, Lockyear’s talk, By Boat, By Train, By Car, By Plane - a Brief History of the Everglades City Airport, was both entertaining and informative. Lockyear’s been managing the museum for eight years, and he’s been giving his Third Thursday Talk Series for seven of those. They’re always worth attending, as Lockyear thoroughly researches his topics, going beyond the headlines to unearth tasty tidbits about his subject. And his spirited delivery always engages the audience.
Among the vignettes related to the history of the airpark is one about Collier County’s first sheriff, William Riley Maynard, the Flying Sheriff.
"Captain William Riley Maynard served in the Spanish-American War and later joined the US Air Corps in WWI,” Lockyear said. “He served in a bombing unit. He was a World War I flying ace. He was the only WWI fighter pilot to have shot down a German plane who had served in the Spanish-American War. He did a lot of flying. He lived with his wife, Blanch, who was also his deputy. They lived upstairs, and the jail was downstairs. And there are lots of really good stories about Blanch, about there being a street fight and her breaking into the middle of it and grabbing the two guys by the ears and dragging them both through the streets and putting them in jail.”
After telling his first story, Lockyear shares a researcher’s trade secret with the audience. “These are the details that you're always looking for," he said, “and usually you find that stuff in somebody's letter.”
Lockyear said the land the airpark is built on was originally a golf course, built by county founder Barron Collier.
"It was only nine holes,” Lockyear said. "But he and his three sons spent a lot of time here. They were raised with fast European cars. They also were all licensed pilots. So, when the opportunity arose, they were flying around here. But there was not a way to land a plane. Mr. Collier works really hard, gets everything going here. The town's a tremendous success. He builds a road to bring people here. But he doesn't have the opportunity to fly you. And he dies at a young age. He's only 66 years old when he dies in 1939. His sons take over the business. These guys are flying from Palm Beach every day. Not sure where they're parking their planes, but they decide they need an actual airport, and this golf course isn't doing anybody any good. Let's just shut it down and repurpose it, and we'll get a different sort of clientele coming here.”
So, the Colliers went about turning a golf course into an airstrip.
“The way that the golf course is,” Lockyear said, “there are rises and rolls that are going to need to be graded. It's not just a big flat ground that they can pave as a runway.”
Lockyear said his research turned up a lot of inaccuracies about the Everglades airport.
“In all the reams and reams of stuff I read about the airport,” Lockyear said, "there are a lot of mistakes. I've seen some recently talking about the historic value of this airport being where (President) Harry Truman landed for the dedication of Everglades National Park. There are pictures of Harry Truman landing, but it's in Naples. They landed in Naples, and then they drove out here. They drove out here because they did dedicate the park there in 1947. They're doing this dedication the same year the Collier brothers have broken ground on the airstrip. In fact, pictures of them with shovels and charts weren't even published until 1953. The airstrip obviously wasn't quite there yet. I'm sure that they were landing their family planes there. It was just a question of whether or not the FAA had approved them to be taking other planes in."
Lockyear also touched on the huge airport that was once planned for the site.
“It’s the late 1960s and people are traveling all over the world,” he said, "and Miami is the busiest airport in the world. And they say there's too many people. There's too much traffic. Nobody's using the Everglades. Let's just build the world's biggest airport in the middle of it. A mammoth jetport. In the future, they're going to have high-speed rail coming through the swamp to bring you down from Tampa. And people are going crazy. It's really where the tree huggers and the deer hunters finally laid down their weapons and got together and worked together to stop that and to turn the Big Cypress into a national preserve. But if you look at some of the propaganda that they were producing about how great it was going to be, this was just going to solve everybody's problems. They called it the Everglades Jetport. But this lady who had been the catalyst for establishing Everglades National Park in the first place, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, became the spokesperson for all these groups, and she somehow convinced (President) Nixon to stop it by executive order.”
Lockyear said hurricanes have taken their toll on the Everglades Airpark over the years, starting with Hurricane Donna in 1960.
"The buildings are all willy-nilly,” Lockyear said. "By 1965, the local residents are getting antsy. They're saying, hey, we want our airport back. You're going to fix it or what? There's kind of a coalition between the FAA and the leadership of Everglades National Park saying, well, we want it and you need to have one there. And everybody's starting to get together. By 1968, the county decides, okay, we're going to purchase this land from the Collier Company. And the Colliers are really starting to pull out of the town. Hurricane Donna was the death knell. The Colliers continued to subsidize it long after their father's death. And long after, there was vibrant business here. The Collier Company wants $125,000 for the for the acreage. The FAA and Department of the interior and or the Park Service agreed to shoulder half the cost of the construction, which is a pretty good deal."
Fast forward to the 1990s and the future of the Everglades Airpark is again in peril.
“Here's where it gets interesting,” Lockyear said. “In 1998, there's a new project near the airport. A developer proposes 200 units. Guy says, ‘Oh, I really want to protect the area. I'm going to do an eco-friendly resort. But I can build up to 800 units.’ There are a bunch of problems with this whole thing. But then in 2002, something else comes through. A different developer. A new development set near the airport. No longer will boaters, fishermen, and tourists have to bypass Everglades City. I think this is the one that they were going to call Everglades Outpost, and it was going to have parking for 18 different speedboats. But somewhere in this, the county in 2002 starts saying, maybe we should think of doing something else with this property. Jim Coletta, former commissioner, envisioned the Everglades airport property being transformed into a boat launching facility, so people can take advantage of the waterfront property. I'm like, what year is this? Because a lot of this sounds very familiar to me."
Lockyear said the residents of Everglades City united against the plan.
“The local people said, don't sell our airport. A strong message to the county. The city will fight. Mayor Sammy Hamilton says there’s no bargaining. This thing's not going anywhere. And the commission says, all right, all right. Keep your airport for now. Commissioners nix the sale after local input. So, it's supposed to work, right? But then Mayor Sammy decides that he doesn't just want to keep the airport, he wants Everglades City to own it. The FAA wants Everglades to prove that they not only have the money to buy the airport, but the to sustain it. People in the government at the time didn't think they had to show anybody anything. So, it was fine for a minute and then it just kind of caught on fire again. And this continues on through 2005. Eventually, the fire goes out, but the airport keeps existing as it does. But now we find ourselves in a similar situation today.”
Lockyear sees history repeating itself.
"You know, it's been operating since the 40s and people are talking about closing it,” Lockyear said. "The local citizens are getting together. They're signing petitions and they're expressing how they feel about it. And I'm going to clarify at this point, I'm not trying to advocate for anything on one side or another. This is a history lesson. It's not the first time that these arguments have been made. Part of the reason that they're saying that it doesn't make any money is because it can't. Other airports make tremendous revenue by renting their hangars, but these hangars were damaged by multiple hurricanes and were never repaired. I ask questions like, where's the FEMA money? Did nobody put in for it? It doesn't appear that anybody made the claim. It's not just the hangers. One of the biggest problems is you can't find fuel there. They have it, but the card reader won't work. Sometimes it's connectivity, sometimes it's the mechanical device. A local citizen was telling me that they won't get the guy to come and fix it. It's very challenging. It makes you wonder if somebody just doesn't want to do it. I was talking to somebody who said the guy that runs the Naples airport says, we sell more fuel than we can shake a stick at. There are lots of different solutions. It's not my job to theorize about what works, what doesn’t. I think it'sreally cool that there are a group of people in town here that are asking to get some questions answered. What do we do to make enough money in order to make it worthwhile to keep it going? And that doesn't even start to address the emergency services aspect of it. Do you really want to get rid of an airport in a place that's as prone to natural disasters as this one? It kind of freaks me out. If we could just go back in time a little bit
Though his topic couldn’t have been more topical, given the drama surrounding the Everglades City Airpark, museum manager Thomas Lockyear insists that his April 17 Thursday Talk program at Museum of the Everglades was planned months in advance.
“We program these way ahead of time,” Lockyear told a full room of attendees. "I have to have these out three, four months ahead of time. I never imagined for a minute that they would suddenly decide to explore the possibility of closing the airport, and I would be speaking on a hot-button political issue. It was not my intent to do that. ”
A story titled Citizens Rally to Save Everglades Airpark was front page news in the current Mullet Rapper, the popular hometown paper, as attendees settled into their seats to hear Lockyear.
For the record, Lockyear’s talk, By Boat, By Train, By Car, By Plane - a Brief History of the Everglades City Airport, was both entertaining and informative. Lockyear’s been managing the museum for eight years, and he’s been giving his Third Thursday Talk Series for seven of those. They’re always worth attending, as Lockyear thoroughly researches his topics, going beyond the headlines to unearth tasty tidbits about his subject. And his spirited delivery always engages the audience.
Among the vignettes related to the history of the airpark is one about Collier County’s first sheriff, William Riley Maynard, the Flying Sheriff.
"Captain William Riley Maynard served in the Spanish-American War and later joined the US Air Corps in WWI,” Lockyear said. “He served in a bombing unit. He was a World War I flying ace. He was the only WWI fighter pilot to have shot down a German plane who had served in the Spanish-American War. He did a lot of flying. He lived with his wife, Blanch, who was also his deputy. They lived upstairs, and the jail was downstairs. And there are lots of really good stories about Blanch, about there being a street fight and her breaking into the middle of it and grabbing the two guys by the ears and dragging them both through the streets and putting them in jail.”
After telling his first story, Lockyear shares a researcher’s trade secret with the audience. “These are the details that you're always looking for," he said, “and usually you find that stuff in somebody's letter.”
Lockyear said the land the airpark is built on was originally a golf course, built by county founder Barron Collier.
"It was only nine holes,” Lockyear said. "But he and his three sons spent a lot of time here. They were raised with fast European cars. They also were all licensed pilots. So, when the opportunity arose, they were flying around here. But there was not a way to land a plane. Mr. Collier works really hard, gets everything going here. The town's a tremendous success. He builds a road to bring people here. But he doesn't have the opportunity to fly you. And he dies at a young age. He's only 66 years old when he dies in 1939. His sons take over the business. These guys are flying from Palm Beach every day. Not sure where they're parking their planes, but they decide they need an actual airport, and this golf course isn't doing anybody any good. Let's just shut it down and repurpose it, and we'll get a different sort of clientele coming here.”
So, the Colliers went about turning a golf course into an airstrip.
“The way that the golf course is,” Lockyear said, “there are rises and rolls that are going to need to be graded. It's not just a big flat ground that they can pave as a runway.”
Lockyear said his research turned up a lot of inaccuracies about the Everglades airport.
“In all the reams and reams of stuff I read about the airport,” Lockyear said, "there are a lot of mistakes. I've seen some recently talking about the historic value of this airport being where (President) Harry Truman landed for the dedication of Everglades National Park. There are pictures of Harry Truman landing, but it's in Naples. They landed in Naples, and then they drove out here. They drove out here because they did dedicate the park there in 1947. They're doing this dedication the same year the Collier brothers have broken ground on the airstrip. In fact, pictures of them with shovels and charts weren't even published until 1953. The airstrip obviously wasn't quite there yet. I'm sure that they were landing their family planes there. It was just a question of whether or not the FAA had approved them to be taking other planes in."
Lockyear also touched on the huge airport that was once planned for the site.
“It’s the late 1960s and people are traveling all over the world,” he said, "and Miami is the busiest airport in the world. And they say there's too many people. There's too much traffic. Nobody's using the Everglades. Let's just build the world's biggest airport in the middle of it. A mammoth jetport. In the future, they're going to have high-speed rail coming through the swamp to bring you down from Tampa. And people are going crazy. It's really where the tree huggers and the deer hunters finally laid down their weapons and got together and worked together to stop that and to turn the Big Cypress into a national preserve. But if you look at some of the propaganda that they were producing about how great it was going to be, this was just going to solve everybody's problems. They called it the Everglades Jetport. But this lady who had been the catalyst for establishing Everglades National Park in the first place, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, became the spokesperson for all these groups, and she somehow convinced (President) Nixon to stop it by executive order.”
Lockyear said hurricanes have taken their toll on the Everglades Airpark over the years, starting with Hurricane Donna in 1960.
"The buildings are all willy-nilly,” Lockyear said. "By 1965, the local residents are getting antsy. They're saying, hey, we want our airport back. You're going to fix it or what? There's kind of a coalition between the FAA and the leadership of Everglades National Park saying, well, we want it and you need to have one there. And everybody's starting to get together. By 1968, the county decides, okay, we're going to purchase this land from the Collier Company. And the Colliers are really starting to pull out of the town. Hurricane Donna was the death knell. The Colliers continued to subsidize it long after their father's death. And long after, there was vibrant business here. The Collier Company wants $125,000 for the for the acreage. The FAA and Department of the interior and or the Park Service agreed to shoulder half the cost of the construction, which is a pretty good deal."
Fast forward to the 1990s and the future of the Everglades Airpark is again in peril.
“Here's where it gets interesting,” Lockyear said. “In 1998, there's a new project near the airport. A developer proposes 200 units. Guy says, ‘Oh, I really want to protect the area. I'm going to do an eco-friendly resort. But I can build up to 800 units.’ There are a bunch of problems with this whole thing. But then in 2002, something else comes through. A different developer. A new development set near the airport. No longer will boaters, fishermen, and tourists have to bypass Everglades City. I think this is the one that they were going to call Everglades Outpost, and it was going to have parking for 18 different speedboats. But somewhere in this, the county in 2002 starts saying, maybe we should think of doing something else with this property. Jim Coletta, former commissioner, envisioned the Everglades airport property being transformed into a boat launching facility, so people can take advantage of the waterfront property. I'm like, what year is this? Because a lot of this sounds very familiar to me."
Lockyear said the residents of Everglades City united against the plan.
“The local people said, don't sell our airport. A strong message to the county. The city will fight. Mayor Sammy Hamilton says there’s no bargaining. This thing's not going anywhere. And the commission says, all right, all right. Keep your airport for now. Commissioners nix the sale after local input. So, it's supposed to work, right? But then Mayor Sammy decides that he doesn't just want to keep the airport, he wants Everglades City to own it. The FAA wants Everglades to prove that they not only have the money to buy the airport, but the to sustain it. People in the government at the time didn't think they had to show anybody anything. So, it was fine for a minute and then it just kind of caught on fire again. And this continues on through 2005. Eventually, the fire goes out, but the airport keeps existing as it does. But now we find ourselves in a similar situation today.”
Lockyear sees history repeating itself.
"You know, it's been operating since the 40s and people are talking about closing it,” Lockyear said. "The local citizens are getting together. They're signing petitions and they're expressing how they feel about it. And I'm going to clarify at this point, I'm not trying to advocate for anything on one side or another. This is a history lesson. It's not the first time that these arguments have been made. Part of the reason that they're saying that it doesn't make any money is because it can't. Other airports make tremendous revenue by renting their hangars, but these hangars were damaged by multiple hurricanes and were never repaired. I ask questions like, where's the FEMA money? Did nobody put in for it? It doesn't appear that anybody made the claim. It's not just the hangers. One of the biggest problems is you can't find fuel there. They have it, but the card reader won't work. Sometimes it's connectivity, sometimes it's the mechanical device. A local citizen was telling me that they won't get the guy to come and fix it. It's very challenging. It makes you wonder if somebody just doesn't want to do it. I was talking to somebody who said the guy that runs the Naples airport says, we sell more fuel than we can shake a stick at. There are lots of different solutions. It's not my job to theorize about what works, what doesn’t. I think it'sreally cool that there are a group of people in town here that are asking to get some questions answered. What do we do to make enough money in order to make it worthwhile to keep it going? And that doesn't even start to address the emergency services aspect of it. Do you really want to get rid of an airport in a place that's as prone to natural disasters as this one? It kind of freaks me out. If we could just go back in time a little bit and think about this place. As you know, the sportsman's paradise that Barron Collier imagined is still a world-class destination. You can't shoot bears and panthers and alligators like you could back then and have one-stop shopping for the taxidermy for your man cave. But there's still lots of really cool stuff to do. And it’s the best fishing in the world right here. Part of the economy here is dependent on that airport because people are flying into that airport to go fishing. And I know because they stop in this museum. I see them all the time. We have groups of people coming in and out of there. It's not my job to tell you that there were almost 4000 flights in and out of Everglades last year. It's not a huge amount, but it’s pretty good for a place where you can't even get gas."
and think about this place. As you know, the sportsman's paradise that Barron Collier imagined is still a world-class destination. You can't shoot bears and panthers and alligators like you could back then and have one-stop shopping for the taxidermy for your man cave. But there's still lots of really cool stuff to do. And it’s the best fishing in the world right here. Part of the economy here is dependent on that airport because people are flying into that airport to go fishing. And I know because they stop in this museum. I see them all the time. We have groups of people coming in and out of there. It's not my job to tell you that there were almost 4000 flights in and out of Everglades last year. It's not a huge amount, but it’s pretty good for a place where you can't even get gas."
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