After 50 years, Jet's gone ... by gimleteye

The Herald reports, "Jet's Florida Outdoors, which has outfitted South Florida campers and sportsmen since the 1950's, is closing for good." Really sorry to see it go. Apparently, a $2 million offer for a new bank branch was too good for its owner, Mark Siegel, to pass up. And for the bank, another place to lure deposits from far flung platted subdivisions of the future, assembled out of drained wetlands. Jet's is located way out west on Bird Road. Today it looks like just another store in a strip mall. It could be anywhere in Florida. Fifty years ago, it was one of the last outposts from Miami before historic Everglades wetlands. These outposts kept moving. Seventy five years ago, you could have found the wetlands just there beyond Lejeune Road and Tamiami Trail, about four miles to the east of Jet's. But block by block, strip mall by strip mall, the Everglades ceded territory to the interests of development. To me, Jet's was a throw-back. It was where hunters and fishermen and campers could reliably go, to reload on gear and equipment that didn't make any sense in a subdivision. Before CVS or Walgreens knew what DEET was, you could find it at Jet's. I wasn't there in the beginning, but 25 years ago when I first slogged through sprawl-land for one or another piece of gear-- taking my kids to show them another retail view of reality--, I could clearly see how the store and its purpose had become symbols of a life under harsh, unstoppable pressure. Over the years, I'd go there infrequently but always noted how the incremental sprawl slowly swallowed the store and its sign in tarmac, asphalt, and development. In my mind it was always a comparison: Jet's and nearby Everglades Lumber. Two opposing forces, using the Everglades as a foundation. I went shopping at Jet's a few months ago, even though it would have been easier to go to Dadeland or somewhere else, and remember feeling what an orphan Jet's had turned into, and by extension, so have we too.