Punta Rassa, Florida
When traveling south from Port Tampa to Fort Myers on the steamboat "Tarpon", the Expedition party stopped at Punta Rassa, "...from where most of the cattle raised in South Florida are shipped, and where the Cuban and Key West cable comes ashore." Punta Rassa is located at the mouth of the Caloosahatchee River on the Gulf coast, southwest of Fort Myers. Throughout the latter half of the 1800s, Punta Rassa was a principal port for shipping cattle to Cuba. Cattle rancher Jacob Summerlin began shipping cattle to Cuba from there in the late 1850s, which helped establish Punta Rassa as a port. In the 1860s after the Civil War, the International Ocean Cable Company installed an underwater telegraph cable from Punta Rassa to Havana, Cuba. This cable was the fastest method for communicating between the U.S. and the Caribbean island.
Credits:
Sources:
References in the Texts:
Links below open in a new browser window.
For other topics referenced in the Expedition texts, please refer to the Index to Subjects and Names.
1892 Everglades Exploration Expedition : Three Digital Texts, 2015