Collier County has always been a lively smuggling port-of-entry. Rum, dope, people, we've had it all. Everglades City once got so notorious they had their own featured segment on 60 Minutes. My pal, Chester Keene, has been in his archives again and dug out these memories.
When the developers decided we needed to dry up some of that nasty 'ol swamp and build a new community called Golden Gate it was a bonanza for drug smugglers. Many new roads were paved in remote areas of the Glades. Roads that served little use except as landing strips for aircraft bringing in tons of marijuana. And other stuff.
Sometimes, with bigger aircraft like DC-3's, the pilot would drop below the radar, and do a touch-and-go on the road/airstrip. While he was taxiing on the runway his crew would be rolling bales of grass out of the plane. By the time he lifted off the plane was empty and he was back on the radar, seemingly just a dropout blip for anyone who was monitoring.
Waiting for this illegal bounty were vans and motor homes that were loaded to capacity and sent back to civilization. This only took a few minutes. And was hugely profitable.
So lucrative that some planes were just dumped after they were landed and unloaded. There was that much profit in the drug/marijuana import, a discarded plane just figured in as part of the overhead.
Pictured are two of these planes that Chester came upon. Just dumped and forgotten.
When the developers decided we needed to dry up some of that nasty 'ol swamp and build a new community called Golden Gate it was a bonanza for drug smugglers. Many new roads were paved in remote areas of the Glades. Roads that served little use except as landing strips for aircraft bringing in tons of marijuana. And other stuff.
Sometimes, with bigger aircraft like DC-3's, the pilot would drop below the radar, and do a touch-and-go on the road/airstrip. While he was taxiing on the runway his crew would be rolling bales of grass out of the plane. By the time he lifted off the plane was empty and he was back on the radar, seemingly just a dropout blip for anyone who was monitoring.
Waiting for this illegal bounty were vans and motor homes that were loaded to capacity and sent back to civilization. This only took a few minutes. And was hugely profitable.
So lucrative that some planes were just dumped after they were landed and unloaded. There was that much profit in the drug/marijuana import, a discarded plane just figured in as part of the overhead.
Pictured are two of these planes that Chester came upon. Just dumped and forgotten.
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