Everglades legend Totch Brown (1920-1996)

Totch's family was among the intitial ones in the Everglades City area of SW Florida soon after the end of the Seminoles Wars (3) in the mid-1800s.
---
Everglades icon ~ Totch Brown
www.examiner.com/acting-in-nat...
(Excerpt) Brown's acting debut was in 1958 - Wind Across the Everglades, starring Burl Ives. His book, films and documentaries that followed, even though years later, were: (book) Totch, A LIfe in the Everglades, (films) Best of: The Everglades National Park, The Sage of Chokoloskee (1993), The Everglades Outlaw: Totch Brown, Yesterday's Everglades (1996), Tallahassee 7000 - Bootleg Whiskey in the Everglades (TV), and the feature film Gone Fishin' (1997) - (Totch died before the film's release).
---
Totch grew up in the mangroves next to his dad's moonshine still in the 1920s. In 1983, Totch also had a major role in the 1983 drug bust called "Operations Everglades." So as to protect others in his family, Totch plead guilty and agreed to do jail time besides forfeiting $2 million dollar.
Thankfully, David Clarke, president of International Video Projects
www.videoprojects.tv/catalog/s... and his friend Gordon Stevens met Totch in 1991 and also did video interviews of Totch in 1993 and 1995. www.amazon.com/dp/B000IO26X2/
Totch: A Life in the Everglades by Loren G. "Totch" Brown, Paperback: 279 pages
www.amazon.com/dp/0813012287/
----
More of Totch Brown
• The Sage of Chokoloske... (5:28 minutes)
• Video (5:44 minutes)
• The Everglades Outlaw,... (5:27 minutes)
• Yesterday's Everglades... (6:27 minutes)
Everglades reflections, Christopher Plummer
groups.google.com/group/e-ever... (Excerpt) Totch Brown, the leader of the pack, was rather more passible than the rest and tried to keep a semblance of law and order among them. At least he could read whereas the rest of them wer pretty illiterate. Totch played himself in the film.
---
After his death I , "Lorna" Totch's daughter purchasee and named Totch's Island. www.airboateverglades.com/totc...
===
Killing Mr. Watson, 1910 (music video)
Shot at a reenactment at the Smallwood General Store in Chokoloskee, Florida.
• Killing Mister Watson (3:36 minutes)
===
Other great reads:
Gladesmen: Gator Hunters, Moonshiners, and Skiffers
By Glen Simmons and Laura Ogden, 1998
www.amazon.com/dp/0813035554/
Forty Years in the Everglades
By Calvin R. Stone, 1979
www.amazon.com/dp/B000H0WAMO/

====
2/3/10
• I'm a Stranger Here (5 minutes)
Writer and journalist John Rothchild tells his story: How he and his family moved to Everglades City in the 1970s just as this remote town in southwest Florida was reaching back to its outlaw roots and embracing marijuana smuggling. Excerpt from the Florida PBS documentary "Escape to Dreamland: The Story of the Tamiami Trail." Music by Owen Conforte.

High Times in Everglades City: Outlaws in the Everglades.
Peter B. Gallagher, March 2005
www.gulfshorelife.com/ARTICLES...
(Excerpt) The big bust began at 5:17 a.m. thursday July 8, 1983, when a convoy of police cars stealth-rolled into town and erected a roadblock across S.R. 29-the only road in and out of Everglades City. By the time the sun came up, more than 200 multi-jurisdictional lawmen, including ominous, full-scale, black-suited SWAT teams, were combing the island, storming into coffee shops, running through back yards, knocking on doors and boarding to search every single maritime vessel on the two islands. In Goodland, Naples and other parts of Collier County, doors were knocked on-and vessels searched-at the same time.
www.saltwatercowboys.org/thest... (Excerpt) We arrived at a small town called Everglades City (1980). Shortly after arriving, I began work with my friend on a boat trapping stone crabs. I had worked two days and two nights, and I had earned $5,000 each night smuggling over 50,000 pounds of marijuana. Not bad for two nights work! . . . After those first two nights my pay per job increased to anywhere from $25,000 a night to $70,000 a night depending on how many tons in the load -- ranged from 15 tons to as much as 50 tons. Once or twice a week was the usual rate but there was a time when I worked 28 nights in a row.
---
Collier Sherrif's drug sweep nets at 21 arrest in Everglades city area, 2007
www.naplesnews.com/news/2007/j...
At least 28 people arrested in Everglades City drug sweep, 1983
www.flickr.com/photos/rakontur...