The Shell Factory and Nature Park
When one sees Shell Factory and Nature Park’s midcentury-style signage along the old highway, one might mistake it for a cheesy, run-down tourist trap. But one would not be mistaken.
Located just north of Fort Myers, Florida, on US Route 41, Shell Factory is a hodgepodge of food stalls, history and animal exhibits, and shopping. Without rhyme or reason, the park’s only theme might be described as “Florida” – except that some of the displays have nothing to do with “Florida”, such as the Christmas store and African taxidermy collection.
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68,000-square-foot warehouse store
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Mother monkeys wearing glasses. Why?
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A pirate with African animals. Why?
The wife and I find a parking space in a large lot with about ten cars. We enter near a neglected putt-putt coarse overgrown with weeds.
There’s a small artificial lake on the right with turtles and koi. On the left is a line of unused paddle boats. It’s Saturday and the area looks deserted. Along the boardwalk are bubblegum machines with fish food. I put a quarter in one, turn the knob, and collect a palmful of pellets that smell like dogfood. I toss a pellet into the water, and watch a turtle turning to get it. A koi quickly emerges from the dark depths to swallow the food. The more I look around, the more turtles I see. There are hundreds of them.
We move off to the main area, where there’s a bar and restaurant, food stalls, and carnival games. Most of the visitors are in the bar, listening to live music from a three-man band covering pop rock tunes.
We cross a courtyard and enter the 68,000-square-foot warehouse store, where there’s the usual made-in-China tchotchkes – magnets, T-shirts, cups, picture frames, post cards, and toys. But then there’s a lot of what the place was named for – seashells.
There’s a museum of most every type of seashell in the world. Starfish, conch, horn snail, angel wing, cone, sand dollar. There are shelves of seashells one can purchase individually, or in a grab bag if one is lazy. There’s a golf cart and lady’s dress covered with sea shells. There’s a four-foot high model church made of seashells. There are seashell ashtrays, sea shell mugs, and seashell dishes.
Fleeing from the shells, I run into the main shop to browse. I notice the store is massive, yet as I survey it, I count only eight or nine people browsing the long isles. The place is past its prime – why?
To truly understand Shell Factory’s current state, one must understand the history of US Route 41. Construction begun in 1926 on this north-south highway, which starts in Copper Harbor, Michigan, and trails down through Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia. The highway enters Florida near Lake City and runs along the west coast to Naples. There it turns east and brushes by Everglades National Park in a stretch of road nicknamed “Alligator Alley”. (And those aren’t road bumps you’re hitting on “alligator Alley”)
In the 1950s and 1960s America perfected three vital things to who we are today: disposable income, reliable cars, and vacation time. Americans fell in love with driving, and driving far. Soon, US-41 was siphoning holidaymakers from all over the northeast United States and down to sunny, snow-free south Florida with its beaches and palm trees.
In the 1960’s the average highway speed was about 55MPH. Along with this relatively slow speed, there were traffic lights at every intersection. A family could take a week to go from Chicago to Miami. By the time their overloaded station wagon reached Florida, they were eager for some local wonders. In a desert of motels and gas stations, Shell Factory was an oasis for tourist thirsty to experience “Florida”.
Forty years ago, Shell Factory was a thriving park, raking carloads of tourist off the highway. But American’s weren’t satisfied with 55MPH. Soon came the stoplight-free freeway, and, unfortunately, the death of the American highway experience.
The particular freeway that murdered US-41 was Interstate 75. I-75 stretches from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, to Miami, Florida. It is 1,786 miles of top-grade pavement. If you were to drive a car 70MPH – the average speed limit – from one end to the other of I-75, it would take you 25.5 hours. You can drive down the length of Florida in less than 7 hours.
I find another room attached to the main store. It’s the taxidermy display, where dozens of stuffed animals stand or are hung behind a fence. Lions, impala, Zebra, boar, buffalo. My wife does not want to enter this room, telling me she has a bad feeling about it. Later, she tells me she did not know the animals were real.
Even though the wildlife is beyond my reach, there is a sign that reads: “Oils from our skin will damage these magnificent animals. Please do not touch.” The wildlife collection was donated in 2008 by a local who hunted the animals in Zimbabwe.
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The shell-covered golf cart with a flat tire
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A room with a lot of shells — NO! IT’S A SHELL MUSEUM!
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The tightly themed African taxidermy collection… and John Wayne… and a two-headed llama
The next room holds a pirate scene. One pirate sits next to a treasure chest, the next pirate is inside a cage, and the next one is a sexy pirate lady. There’s even a skeleton pirate just in case we left that off the list. A console with twelve buttons lets visitors listen to recorded stories about pirates – historic or made-up, who cares. I spend a minute listening to the first story, which is about the Shell Factory Hotel being haunted by the ghost of a pirate. Then it suggests I should stay in that room and check it out. On the wall is an array of pirate toys. One thing Shell Factory does well is pushing the merchandise.
A mother and her young son walk in while I’m in the room. They are speaking Spanish. I can’t understand what they are saying, but it appears the boy wants to leave the pirate room, while the mother wants him to stay and look around.
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Confused tourists in the pirate room
Next came an eerie room dedicated to the Kennedy assassination. A video plays a loop of some senator’s speech about the JFK Investigation, but the volume is too low to hear – thank goodness. Tactfully displayed below the TV, JFK memorabilia is on sale.
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No Florida theme park is complete without a JFK assassination room
Finally, there’s the Christmas store. No need to wait till December. Now you can get all that cutesy, gaudy merchandise all year round.
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Boss: “Selling Christmas stuff year round isn’t enough.” Employee: “I got it. Upside-down Christmas trees!”
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Wall painting near men’s restroom
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Ostrich in cage hanging from ceiling. Why?
When we walked out of the Shell Factory and Nature Park, I felt I could no longer say it was a cheap tourist trap. Shell Factory goes beyond that and reaches another plane. It has turned the cheesy attraction volume up to eleven. It has made passé kitsch into something genuine, something historic. It is doing with spectacle what Disney and Las Vegas can never imitate because it takes too long, requires too much patience to find all that crap – and the marketing directors would never allow it. It has taken ideas that are so out-of-date glitzy that they have come back around to being unique, fresh, and, dare I say, cool.
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Shell Factory main sign damaged after hurricane Irma
