COLLIER'S RESERVE COUNTRY CLUB
Dimock Lane: In 1908, A.W. Dimock, a land surveyor, began a trip across the Florida wilderness in a canoe and wound up on an ox-cart. He discovered that most of the Big Cypress Country was less than 15 feet above sea level. Dimock describes his trip as follows: "...We paddled and wallowed through two hundred miles of flower clad lakes and boggy, moccasin-infested trails, zigzagginf from border to border of the Florida Everglades, and were hauled for five days on pine covered stretches of sand, across submerged prairies, and through sloughs of the Big Cypress Country, but we failed to reach the big lake (Okeechobee) by twenty-five miles."
Crosspointe Drive: The east-west connecting road that branches off Collier's Reserve Drive just outside the entrance of Collier's Reserve. It leads directly to the expansive shopping of Riverchase Shopping Center, a Collier Enterprises endeavor, without the need of exiting onto Immokalee Road.
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Gormican Lane: James Joseph ("J.J." or "Joe") Gormican came aboard the growing Collier empire a week before the disastrous hurricane of 1926. He had signed on as secretary to F. J. Frankenhoff, the company auditor at the then Collier Country seat, Everglades City. Legend has it that the day of the hurricane Gormican left his pocket watch in center drawer of his desk. When the flood hit, the salt water came up just high enough to ruin his watch.
New York offices... and back would come a check that took care of everything." Through the Big Depression, the Collier control center at Everglades City became a timber-overseeing operation. Joe also witnessed the start of the huge agricultural projects...and the discovery of oil at Sunniland in 1928. Joe lived with his wife and two daughters in Everglades City until after Hurricane Donna in 1960.
And so, Joe Gormican, company auditor, monitored the Collier empire from the '26 hurricane. He saw it through "Black Friday" in 1929, when up until that time, financing the vast Florida operation was "merely a matter of sending a note to the