Historic Hike

Now a developing arts and entertainment district, downtown has undergone some recent improvements, including the restoration of many of the historic buildings in which the City of Palms got its start, but which were abandoned and left to deteriorate in the 1970s as malls drew shoppers away.

Weekly tours by Fort Myers Historical Museum docents lead walkers on a 90-minute jaunt back in time, starting at the museum, which occupies the Atlantic Coast Line passenger depot, built in 1924, when the city's population totaled 6,000.

The leisurely tour meanders north toward the Caloosahatchee River, with well-informed docents such as Joan Krick leading the way. She points out things most visitors would miss on their own-the now-empty coquina-stone federal building, which served as the town's post office in the early 1900s; the site of the city's first luxury tourist hotel, built in 1898, which boasted 24-hour electrical power; and the Fort Myers Yacht Basin, built as a WPA project in 1937 and which today serves commercial vessels and private boats.

A growing number of restored buildings now hold retail shops and restaurants on the ground floor and condos and apartments on upper floors.

Participants come away with a feel for how this one-time agricultural outpost has developed into a popular tourist destination with about 50,000 residents in the city limits. The tour winds up just in time to try lunch at a downtown restaurant.

-- Historic Downtown Walking Tours take place at 10 a.m. every Wednesday from January through April. They depart from the Fort Myers Historical Museum, 2300 Peck St., one block south of Martin Luther King Boulevard, between Jackson and Lee streets, Fort Myers. The fee is $5 for adults, $3 for children. Call 332-5955 to reserve a spot.