Paradise or Purgatory: The Challenges of Living in Flamingo

Mosquitoes

Mosquitoes have always been a major deterrent to Flamingo’s residents. During the early years, stories abound of cows and mules left out overnight being killed by swarms of mosquitoes. Residents equipped every house with a smudge pot and a palmetto fan.

A man in Cape Sable carrying a smudge pot and a palmetto leaf
This image of a Florida East Coast Railway employee in Cape Sable near Flamingo shows him wearing a mosquito net and carrying a smudge pot and a palmetto leaf as weapons to fight off the swarm of mosquitoes around him. These items are what residents and visitors would use in the “loser” rooms to rid themselves of mosquitoes before entering the house.

Florida Memory (RC14007, public domain)

Weary residents placed outside their houses smudge pots in which they burned black mangrove wood to help ward off the mosquitoes. Imagine upon entering a house having to brush yourself off with a palmetto fan in a room called a “loser,” because it was where you were supposed to lose your mosquitoes! In 1893, naturalist Leverett White Brownell visited Flamingo and described the village as “shacks on stilts infested with fleas and mosquitos.” Brownell even claimed to have seen an oil lamp extinguished by a cloud of mosquitoes!

Mangroves about 4 miles east of Cape Sable in April 1916
The leaves and branches of black mangroves, like those pictured here, would have been burned in the smudge pots to ward off mosquitos. This black mangrove hammock was photographed about 4 miles east of Cape Sable in April 1916.

Florida Memory (SM0206, public domain)

Today, visitors to the Flamingo Visitor Center will find a "mosquito-meter" that warns them of the current intensity of the mosquito population.
Most years the return of mosquitoes during the rainy spring and summer was a predictable occurrence. But for Flamingo residents without modern weather prediction technology, tropical storms and hurricanes posed irregular but serious danger to their existence on the margins of Florida Bay. What could you do to prepare for hurricanes if you did not know when they were coming?

CHALLENGES OF LIVING IN FLAMINGO

  • A primitive house on stilts
    Isolation

    Simple structures like this dotted the landscape in the Flamingo area in the first half of the 1900s.

  • Satellite image of Hurricane Irma over Florida
    Tropical Weather

    Hurricanes sweep across South Florida, leaving trails of destruction.

  • Fishing boat in the ocean
    Making a Living

    The rich natural resources in Florida Bay lure people trying to make a living.

  • Flamingo visitor center
    The NPS in Flamingo

    The National Park Service transforms life in Flamingo after Everglades National Park is dedicated in 1947.

Last updated: July 16, 2024