Estero, Florida
Near Fort Myers, Florida
Estero, between Fort Myers and Naples on the southwest Florida coast, has an unusual origin. In eighteen ninety-four, a New York-born physician named Cyrus Teed led a small religious commune called the Koreshan Unity to this estuarine stretch of the Imperial River and established what he called the New Jerusalem. Teed, who called himself Koresh, believed the Earth was a hollow sphere and that humanity lived on its inner surface.
His followers built workshops, a printing press, a bakery, and a concert hall, and at its peak the colony numbered a couple of hundred people. Teed died in nineteen oh eight, and the colony slowly faded as membership dwindled. The Koreshan State Park today preserves the commune's historic buildings along the river.
The surrounding town of Estero has since become one of the fastest-growing communities in Florida, with a population approaching forty thousand.
