Alva Museum

Alva Museum Quaint, old-Florida museum under the oaks run by the nonprofit all-volunteer Alva Library Association It was Capt.

Nestled under live oaks just a stone's throw from the Caloosahatchee, this independent little museum is one of the remaining strongholds of old Southwest Florida. Come to think of it, so is the little town whose history it contains. The first incorporated municipality in Lee County, Alva was founded by one of its original colorful characters: Captain Peter Nelson, a red-bearded, hard-drinking, big

-hearted Danish seafarer who claimed to be the illegitimate son of the king of Denmark. Nelson who donated the land for the town's first library — now the front part of the museum. The back part is what remains of the old Owanita chapel, which was picked up, moved to town and merged with the library building some years ago. This hybrid, just 15 miles away from the bigger and far better-funded Southwest Florida Museum of History, is still rich with history. From ancient fossils to still-working gramophones, the all-volunteer museum gives a compact — if a bit cluttered — view into the town's past. A visit to the museum feels a bit like poking around in Alva's collective attic. On one wall is a burnished grandfather clock from the English family, a clarinet someone found at the bottom of the Caloosahatchee, old canvas citrus bags and a hunk of home-cured to***co. An old screen-fronted pie safe shares space with antique military swords. A display of alarmingly shaped vintage medical implements all but fills one small room. You can pick up one of the folded, circa-1960 histories of Alva penned by the granddaughter of the town's third settler and longtime librarian of Alva High School, the late Irby Clay, it's a quaintly engaging account of Alva's more distant past. And when you're done, you can head over to the Alva Boat Ramp, just up Pearl Street, park and stroll out onto the dock over the Caloosahatchee. There, if you've got a copy of Irby's pamphlet, you can dangle your feet and read what she wrote about that river - the river that gave birth to Alva. "... Every place on the river, whether bows or bends, you were in full view of banks laden with hibiscus and greenery. Huge oaks stretched their arms, draped in grey beards of Spanish moss and air plants ... Tall, stately cypress trees reached skyward. Many varieties of water-loving flowers grew on the banks - white spider lilies, blue flags, hyacinths. When salt water reached the river, we spent many hours at night fascinated by the phosphorous waterfire. Every sunken log, every fish or turtle that moved became a light of fire. After dark, the river was then an unbelievable paradise. Long ribbons of fire followed your boat or your hand as it was held in the water. This is one of the many beautiful things about the river I am thankful to have known."

I think I can relate to Mr. Hurd’s love of Alva and the Alva School. JAY C. HURDA Letter to the Editor by Dayton Nobles ...
09/02/2026

I think I can relate to Mr. Hurd’s love of Alva and the Alva School.

JAY C. HURD

A Letter to the Editor by Dayton Nobles Jr.

April with its long, hot days and cool, moonlit nights was a lovely month but indeed a very fickle one. Fickle inasmuch as it took from our county an old and dear friend, Mr. Jay C. Hurd, the Grand Old Man of Alva.

Mr. Hurd dedicated half of his life to the public school system of Lee County in various capacities. His love for Lee County and its children was surpassed only by his love for Alva and its people. With the passing of Hurd, Alva has lost one of its greatest spokesmen. He always claimed, in no uncertain terms, that anyone who hadn’t lived in Lee County and especially in Alva had yet to know the magic of tranquility. Hurd loved that land and the people there with a passion witnessed but few times in a lifetime.

It was hot and sultry and little drops of perspiration ran down out of people’s hair and stung their cheeks and tickled their ears, the quietness could be felt as if it were a tangible thing, fickle April refused a breeze.

At the Methodist Church of Alva it was 4 p.m. Saturday, April 17. Jay C. Hurd was dead, his body was there in its casket in front of the pulpit, masses of flowers wafted the odor of spring through the church. A young preacher said nice things about Hurd and pretty girls with cherub faces sang that rock of ages was cleft for him. Notables and just folks were saying goodbye to a fighting old friend. We came from many walks of life to be there on that grocery buying day of April.

After the service Leo and the pallbearers moved the casket back into the hearse and Mr. Hurd’s last journey began its winding way. A way that led past the Alva school for which Hurd had battled so long, past cabbage palms and water oaks and palmettos and finally across sun-baked grazing land and the sun-sweet smell of an April Alva.

Mr. Hurd’s grave was to be at the Alva Cemetery as he wished, an Alva place. Near there where the box sat on its lowering device was a tall Alva pine tree, draped with Alva moss, and from the Saturday sky burned down a 5 o’clock Alva sun.

I walked for a while over the cemetery with Mr. Guy Strayhorn and we smoked. Guy read out to me the names of frontier people resting there and told me about some of them. He told it with a full half century of experience at Lee County and with Lee County people. We allowed that even here Hurd was among friends and at Alva a place that to him was paradise.

Hurd’s rambling old house at Alva proper still after all the years held his rocking chair on its wide screen porch, it rocked emptily and lonely to a tiny breeze that April and finally bequested to the evening time aroma. His shading oak tree still tall and stately near the porch was touched for a moment while I watched by a fleeting will o’ the wisp. It was 5:30 p.m.

DAYTON NOBLES JR.

Originally published as a letter to the editor of the Fort Myers News-Press, April 29, 1965, p. 4-A. Dayton Nobles Jr. was the author of the letter, not the newspaper’s editor.

08/30/2026

🚨 ONE FINAL PUSH — AND WE NEED YOUR HELP SPREADING THE WORD! 🚨

Last year, you all helped us take A Land Remembered far beyond what we ever imagined. Teachers, Extension agents, agricultural organizations, parents, producers, and friends shared the program across Florida — and it took off.

Can we do it again? 🌴🐄📚

Registration is wrapping up for A Land Remembered: Where Cattle, Conservation, and Beef Come Together! — a 6-week classroom program for 4th grade, 5th grade, middle AND high school students!

Using Patrick D. Smith’s A Land Remembered, students get to experience Florida’s history while connecting it to the agriculture and natural resources that still shape our state today.

📖 Daily reading from A Land Remembered
🌱 ELA, science, math & social studies connections
🗺️ Journals, maps, worksheets & vocabulary
🐄 Pioneer life + modern ranching
✏️ Real-world writing activities
🎥 PLUS a one-day statewide livestream on February 26, 2027!

And we need YOUR help getting this into the hands of teachers.

You may not be a teacher — but you probably know one. Share this post. Tag an educator. Send it to your local school. Drop it in a homeschool group. Share it with your 4-H families. Send it to that teacher who loves Florida history.

One share could put this program in front of an entire classroom of students. ❤️

🔗 REGISTER HERE:
https://forms.cloud.microsoft/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=-KBNDTFKdk2s5gpiMx4bhLlLEGE0DK1LruOuG4GP70ZUMFhGRFhNUzc5UUFBS0pYRDUxMjRMTjFFWS4u&utm_source=chatgpt.com&route=shorturl

📧 Questions? [email protected]

Help us make Florida’s story go viral one more time. 🌴🐂📚

A rare glimpse of the first bridge to cross the Caloosahatee River - Alva, 1903.Original image courtesy of the Lee Count...
08/23/2026

A rare glimpse of the first bridge to cross the Caloosahatee River - Alva, 1903.

Original image courtesy of the Lee County Clerk of Courts Historical Archives and Joanne Iwinski Miller.

Enhanced and colorized by AI.

Cattle headed for Cuba at Punta Rassa. Courtesy of the Lee County Clerks Office Historical Records and Joanne Iwinski Mi...
08/22/2026

Cattle headed for Cuba at Punta Rassa.

Courtesy of the Lee County Clerks Office Historical Records and Joanne Iwinski Miller.

1929 - The first comprehensive survey of The Caloosahatchee River and Lake Okeechobee Performed by the Army Corps of En...
08/14/2026

1929 - The first comprehensive survey of The Caloosahatchee River and Lake Okeechobee Performed by the Army Corps of Engineers. The best representation of the "the way it used to be" before significant human intervention to address drainage and flooding.

08/14/2026

We’re looking forward to welcoming Gregory Enns to the Alva Museum on Saturday, October 10th for a special presentation of Cow Creek Chronicles.

Mr. Enns has spent years researching, documenting, and sharing the stories of Florida’s past, the people, places, cattle country, and communities that helped shape the Florida we know today.

If you enjoy Florida history, pioneer stories, old Florida, or the heritage of our cattle country, this is one you’ll want to put on your calendar.

📅 Saturday, October 10th
📍 Alva Museum — Alva, Florida

Come spend some time with us, hear some great Florida stories, and help us keep our local history alive.

More details coming soon!

Take a look at this review-
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1ELvHrkG8B/?mibextid=wwXIfr

The following is the extracted text from a Fort Myers News-Press article published February 23, 1975, reflecting on Alva...
08/12/2026

The following is the extracted text from a Fort Myers News-Press article published February 23, 1975, reflecting on Alva High School, longtime teacher and librarian Irby Clay, and the school’s place in the Alva community. The text has been formatted for readability while preserving the original content and wording of the article.
——————————————————
“She says she is happy now — always something to do but never enough time. And you believe it. For vital people, it can be no other way: Yet, there are reminders: The yearbooks, the testimonial plaques, the conversation turning always to the past. And the listener is filled with a sense of regret for this woman, and a sense of inexorable loss at the passing of something as basic as a small high school in a small town…”

Fifteen miles east of Fort Myers a highway bridge arches its back like an asphalt cat before depositing travelers in the village of Alva. But before the bridge and before the roads, there was only the river. Alva exists because of the river. Early fruit growers could ship their produce east or west and wealthy yachtsmen could follow the Caloosahatchee inland.

Until 1902, when a wooden bridge was built, Alva was protected in this natural manner. By then, it did not matter a great deal. If communities can absorb character and take direction, Alva was taking a direction of its own. Already there was a school, and a library, too — the first in Southwest Florida. Alva’s settlers seemed intent in building a cultural permanence about their town, regardless of its remote setting. An entry into the Library Journal dated June 26, 1909, reflects on the birth of the library eight years previous:

“The Alva Library, like every enterprise for the good of man, had a small beginning…”

Indeed, most of Alva is the result of small beginnings.

When early residents decided their village needed a school of structural durability, they began by manufacturing bricks from native material. By 1914 the fine, two-story schoolhouse was opened to elementary and high schoolers alike.

And, just as the building of the schoolhouse drew villagers closer together, so the school system which evolved bonded residents into a community oneness.

As long as parents could watch their children, and their grandchildren, sit in the same slant-top desks, play on the same athletic teams and graduate from the same brick building, the continued individuality of Alva was assured.

For Irby Clay, her school career began with the school’s opening in 1914. She was in first grade. Twelve years later she graduated. Miss Clay remembers that era as…

“…a fine, fine time to live in Alva. Everyone was so close, you know. Like brothers and sisters. All of us kids had our own lil’ ol’ places to camp and swim and ride horses. Oh, and there were parties too. Everyone went. And we had our dances at the school, too.”

Miss Clay left all that to go to college, but returned after only two years.

“The new Alva High School was opened while I was away,” she will tell you, “and they offered me a job teaching. The Depression had just started and times were tough. Besides, I wanted to teach.”

So at age 20, Miss Clay began teaching in both the new high school, and in the building she had spent her life as a student. Save for four years in another system, Irby Clay would continue to teach and act as librarian at Alva High until she became as much a school tradition as Prom, a good football team or the school yearbook. And when Alva High School closed in 1972 a part of Irby Clay and Alva closed with it… Now, the building is Alva Elementary School.

Today, Miss Clay lives in a modern, stucco home on land once homesteaded by her father. She has brown hair, high cheekbones, and a downhome manner one doesn’t normally associate with retired school teachers. For one thing, she looks too young to have so much behind her.

But she does.

Thirty-seven years of teaching, and library work.

When she started there were between 40 and 50 students at Alva High and when she retired there were more than 500.

“But there was always that closeness,” she says now. “I can’t exactly describe it to you — the way kids in a small town join around their high school. It’s like a family more than anything else. And my, we had good athletic teams, too. I don’t know why — we were such a small school — maybe it’s because lil’ ol’ country boys have to play harder. Don’t know. But the kids loved the teachers and the teachers loved the kids.”

One of those kids, now an elementary substitute teacher at the original brick school, is Mrs. RosaMary McCoy. Mrs. McCoy graduated from Alva High in 1960, and she remembers Irby Clay as a favorite among the students.

“She was always a lot of fun,” Mrs. McCoy will tell you. “She chaperoned most of our dances and everyone loved her. She coached the girls basketball team, too. Sure, I played. And we had good teams. Irby was always one for practical jokes and she can tell a good ghost story, too.”

So, as teacher and school librarian, Irby watched her students graduate, settle in Alva, then produce children of their own.

“Lot of my kids still live nearby,” says Miss Clay. “I have two on the Sheriff’s Department. A couple helped build my house and one was in to fix my phone the other day. They’re all around. I think they were all heartbroken, too, when the high school here closed down and Alva kids started attending Riverdale. A big ol’ high school like that can’t be as good as a place where everyone knows and likes each other. There’s no doubt in my mind Alva has changed because of it.

“The people who live here still have a certain closeness, but not nearly as much as we had when the high school was going.

“We used to have kids from big towns visit Alva over the summer and like the place so much they wanted to stay and go to the high school. One boy from Miami came to visit his aunt and refused to leave. They couldn’t make him, either. There was a tradition here other places didn’t have.”

So, the high school folded and the original brick building will probably become a community center when a new elementary school is completed next year. The cultural permanence sought by the first Alva residents is being absorbed by an American phenomenon known as suburbanization.

08/11/2026

I don’t have any pictures to go with this one, but it’s a personal favorite. Mrs. Hawkins preserved so much local history in her column.

Fort Myers (Fla.) News-Press — Saturday, March 15, 1969
The Alva Scene

All-Purpose Oxen Preceded Mules in Frontier Land

By BETTY HAWKINS

Along the frontier oxen were preferred as beasts of burden because of their ability to turn in a good day’s work, haul the family equipage, and forage from the land requiring little or no supplemental feed. In time the mule skinner made his appearance and introduced drovers and farmers to the cross-bred animal that could out-do the plodding ox at every turn and better withstand the summer heat making it well worth its board of several measures of grain daily.

Among the first of these drivers in Alva was Edward Fussell who, in his younger days, punched cattle for an outfit in Wauchula and became attracted to the river country while herding over the crossing on the way to Punta Rassa. Arriving in the 90’s with the idea of settling in the village he went in search of work with which he was familiar and, landing a job as rangerider for Lykes Brothers, found himself far afield again working up around Tampa.

On off-time from round-ups he headed back toward the crossing. On one of his trips, stopping over briefly in New Prospect (Bayshore) he met little Rachel Lee. Alva was forgotten temporarily while he concentrated his leisure hours on wooing and winning the pretty girl. After marriage he brought his bride upstream to a house on Hickey’s Creek. In the following years three daughters were born and the young mother and her little ones led a lonely existence during the months that Edward was coralling.

It was still fairly wild country and at night panthers closed in about the house and, becoming bolder with each visit, clawed at doors and windows. Indians had been seen skulking in the scrub and added to the uneasiness of the little girls waiting on the bank while their mother washed clothes in the river.

Homesick for his family and concerned with their welfare, Fussell finally gave up his range job, invested in a pair of mules and began working as a teamster. Shortly after, he was engaged as foreman of the Francis W. Perry Groves east of Alva and moved his family into the company house there.

A fourth daughter was born to the couple and Edward, enjoying his role of householder and father, spent as much time as possible romping and being pal to his youngsters, ones nicknamed “Babe” and “Dot.” At that time birth certificates were not required and the Fussells decided to let the two younger girls pick out their own names. It was not until Babe was enrolled in first grade that Edward and Rachel realized little girls could take a long time deliberating such a privilege and their small daughter had not yet made her selection. Asked by the teacher to identify herself correctly the child, taken unawares, piped up with Eddie, her father’s name, and Pearl — toward which she had a leaning — and she was legally known as that henceforth. When little Dot was ready for school, fearing the tot would be subjected to the same circumstances, Eddie Pearl chose the name, Dorothy Marie, for her sister before her parents could press the point.

The school on the north side was a three-room white clapboard frame building, which later was remodeled for the teacherage. There was no transportation furnished in those days for children even in the remote areas and the Fussell youngsters hiked down the sandy road, called Pearl Street, to and from classes. When the river was on an unruly spree in the low-lying areas they were picked up from a second floor window of their rural home and rowed into town over inundated gates and fences on which they had happily swung only the day before.

After some years the Perry Groves were sold and the Fussells moved to the rambling house now owned by Albert Dyess in the heart of town. To live right in the village was exciting and they enjoyed going as a family to the square dances and tripping to the lively tunes of expert fiddler, Stafford Keen. There were overnight trips to Fort Myers by the all purpose mule team to visit the A. Skinners who owned a livery stable, and excursions on the river aboard Alva Burke’s pleasure boat Rexall.

Special holidays meant picnics and outings and “Revival” time brought visitors from the surrounding countryside, many of whom stayed at the Fussells where hospitality abounded. Christmas was a particularly happy time with the ceremony of stockings being hung the evening before and the father playing surreptitious Santa Claus to the supposed-to-be-sleeping girls. Open house was observed always at the Fussells but yuletide brought an influx of guests to enjoy good companionship and sit down to a table groaning under turkey, chicken, pork, beef and all the trimmings. Life was good for Edward and Rachel.

As the girls grew to maturity they married and moved away. Eddie Pearl wed Fred Dyess, half-brother of Annie Dyess Daniels, and later they returned to Alva. Fred was an expert box builder and had come down from Fort Ogden to work at the local packinghouse. During the early years of their marriage he worked at Lee County Packinghouse then returned to Alva to work at his trade for Cousin, Lynn Williams and did additional chores as a grover to assure a good living for his wife and two daughters, Gwendolyn and Winifred. The last years of his life he worked at MacCanon’s store until ill health forced retirement.

When the Dyess daughters married they became links in an unusual relationship chain. Gwendolyn wed Clyde Murphy whose sister, Bessie, married Audrey Golden and Winifred became the wife of Russell Golden, Audrey’s younger brother. Thus the Audrey Golden children are first cousins of the Russell Golden offspring who are first cousins of the Murphy children who in turn are first cousins of the Audrey Golden youngsters. “Adding to the Dyess network”, chuckled Mrs. Eddie Pearl Dyess, “we have just about a nodding relationship with everybody in town.”

Mrs. Dyess lives in the cozy cottage on Park Avenue which Fred built in later years. She keeps busy sewing and embroidery, serves on the election board and takes pleasure in spending time with her daughter, Mrs. Murphy, grandchildren and great grandchildren residing in Alva. She has distributed interesting possessions among her children but has kept a Civil War vintage r***e which belonged to her husband’s grandfather, Patrick of Fort Ogden, a lovely hand-rubbed chest of drawers which was the first piece of furniture purchased by her mother, and a brass-bound wooden doll trunk, a gift from her father, as mementos of her loved ones.

A gentle and interesting woman, Mrs. Dyess has a fine philosophy that each step along the way brings its own happiness and that the pleasure of living is in the journey itself.

Around the middle of last week, another familiar piece of Alva quietly disappeared.The old house on Palm Beach Boulevard...
08/02/2026

Around the middle of last week, another familiar piece of Alva quietly disappeared.

The old house on Palm Beach Boulevard, just west of the Alva turnoff, has finally been torn down.

For years, its fate seemed inevitable. Time, weather, and neglect had left it standing like a lightning-struck tree, an unmistakable landmark, but one that had become dangerous and beyond saving. Most people knew it as an eyesore, and in the end, demolition was probably the only realistic outcome.

But a hundred years ago, it was something entirely different.

It was a new home and the office of Dr. Archie S. Byle, one of the pioneering physicians who cared for families across East Lee County, Fort Denaud, and Fort Myers. Built in 1928, the house served as both his residence and medical practice, where countless rural residents sought treatment and where generations of local families began their stories. Local accounts even recall Dr. Byle delivering babies in homes throughout the community.

In 1941, the property was purchased by Sam and Florence Snyder, who made it their home for decades. Sam’s own story reflected the history of early Alva—arriving in the area to work in the groves for a dollar a day before building a life here. After the Snyders, the home passed through several owners, remaining a recognizable landmark even as it slowly slipped into decline.

Thankfully, before the house was lost, Joanne Iwinski Miller researched and documented its history in a wonderful article she wrote in 2022. Because of her work, and with the discovery of photographs of both the house and its original owners, we can remember it for what it once was, not simply the weathered shell so many of us drove past, but a place that once represented hope, healing, and the future of a growing community.

Buildings don’t last forever. Memories do, if we choose to preserve them.

Today, the house is gone, but its story remains. Sometimes that’s the most important part of preservation: making sure that when the physical landmark disappears, the people and history connected to it are not forgotten.

Special thanks to Joanne Iwinski Miller for her research and to Bill Byle for providing historical photographs and family information that helped preserve the story of this remarkable old home.

Address

21420 Pearl Street
Alva, FL
33920

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