239-472-4648
On Monday, March 9, the volunteers at the Sanibel Historical Museum and Village will have an opportunity to learn the “real story” of Punta Rassa from the grandchildren of Leon Crumpler and Clyde Riddle. These fifth generation Lee County natives, whose parents were raised in Punta Rassa, have wonderful tales about riding the ferry with their grandfather, Captain Leon Crumpler.
In 1898, Punta Rassa gained national fame when the news of the sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana, Cuba, was received by the International Ocean Telegraph Company. A relay station had been built on the point in 1867.
Around 1920, A large white house, two main houses, and a small house and a garage were built on the property by Western Union to house their employees. Then the company closed their office in 1935. In 1939, Leon Crumpler purchased the property.
Leon and his wife, Clyde, leased the white house as a restaurant that was not successful. They rented out the other houses to soldiers who were stationed in the area during the war.
One of the buildings became the Punta Rassa Grocery which Clyde managed while her husband ran the ferry boats for thirty-six years. Captain Leon came to the Ft. Myers area in 1921 from Goldsboro, N.C. where his family farmed tobacco. He was hired by the Kinzie Brothers to captain steamboats, and then after 1929, auto ferries.
In 1979 the property was sold to a developer. Clyde Crumpler, interviewed at the time of the sale, was surprised that condominiums would be built on a point that was washed away so many times by storms.
To learn what it was really like to live at Punta Rassa and ride the ferries, come to the Sanibel Historical Village and Museum and meet Leon Crumpler’s grandchildren and their spouses, Donna Lott Gaylor, Phil Gaylor, Roger Tabor, Sheila Briggs Tabor and Richard Chappelle.