This tower was built in Florida in 1910 in order to disperse and destroy mosquitoes, including malaria, on the Mosquito Coast.
But something went wrong …
Florida has a lot of mosquitoes - at least it was a hundred years ago. It is known that Humphrey Bogart's film The African Queen was actually filmed in Florida due to its resemblance to the Amazon jungle. A variety of mosquito control methods were tested simultaneously.
Dr. Charles A. Campbell suggested fighting them with bats, the natural enemies of mosquitoes. This method was not the most effective, but it was still cheaper than others, and could well be used as one of the options.
Initially, Campbell tried this idea in Texas - bats were introduced there and settled in their natural habitats. Apparently, there was some effect. In the same years, the well-known businessman Richter Clyde Perky acquired a plot in a remote area in Florida, where he organized a fishing business - he built a house for visiting fishermen and everything else that is required for a serene fishing.
Of course, he knew about mosquitoes, but he probably didn't realize that this would be a very serious problem. However, this all turned out to be much worse, and after a short operation, the business stalled - anglers stopped coming here, despite advertising and various discounts.
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The businessman decided to fight mosquitoes. Any chemical treatment of the territory, taking into account the need to maintain the ecology of the fishing business territory, was clearly not suitable here.
Perky contacted Campbell, and eventually several towers were built, and bats were brought there from other places. But something went wrong. The bats refused to live in these towers and just flew away from these places. Business collapsed - mosquitoes ate it.
This photo shows the approximate size of the tower.
Richter Parks lost a lot of money as a result, Charles Campbell and the builders made money, and the bats just had fun with this project.
The tower that has survived to this day was destroyed by Hurricane Irma in 2017.