2023 kicks off 100 years of Collier County Sheriff's Office
A hundred years ago, Collier County was a wild and woolly place.
Naples, not yet a city and with only a couple hundred inhabitants, was just a dot on the map. As the population grew, the government took root and lawmen entered the region.
“It had to be quite an adventure being sheriff,” said Wayne Maynard, 73, whose grandfather William Riley "W.R." Maynard stepped up as the first sheriff. “He went out into the Everglades, tracking down criminals with my daddy on his hip.”
The Tamiami Trail had not yet been cut across the Everglades to Miami, and when Collier County was carved out of the territory of Lee County in 1923, Everglades City became the county seat.
That same year, the Collier County Sheriff’s Office began its work, patrolling the county and protecting its citizens. Monday afternoon, current Collier Sheriff Kevin Rambosk went to Everglades City to kick off a commemoration of 100 years of the sheriff's office.
Maynard, W.R.'s great-grandson Ryan Maynard, 43, and about two dozen spectators, most of them deputies or sheriff's employees, joined Rambosk in front of the columns of Everglades City Hall, where the sheriff maintains a satellite office.
“One hundred years ago, right here in Everglades City, the first sheriff was sworn in,” Rambosk said.
In 100 years, he noted, “we’ve had very few sheriffs – only seven. We thank you for your lineage, for your grandfather and great grandfather,” he told the Maynards.
Along with his wife, Chief Deputy Blanche Maynard, and one other deputy, William Maynard maintained law and order across the vast expanse of Collier County from 1923 to 1928.
Detective Tom Smith, who has been with the sheriff's office for 45 years, said in those early days, the law enforcement officers had no radio communications and no department-issued vehicles – “just Model Ts or Model As, whatever car they had available. The three of them covered 2,025 square miles,” most of it impenetrable wilderness.
Rambosk presented Maynard’s descendants with commemorative plaques, and unveiled the centennial badges all CCSO deputies, starting with those who work in the Everglades City area, will wear.
"He was a Renaissance man – a soldier, a lawman, an aviator, a photographer," Maynard said of his grandfather. "And he was a great family man, a very gentle man, but a man’s man."
It is hard for us today to fathom just how rugged and isolated life was for the pioneering citizens of the county in those days, or how many of the things we take for granted were simply not available in that frontier environment.
The two Maynards chose different career paths, both working as financial advisers in the Dallas area. They came to Collier County for the occasion.
Before the ceremony at City Hall, they had lunch at the historic Rod & Gun Club.
“It was like stepping back into the past,” Ryan Maynard said. Afterward, they toured the Museum of the Everglades, which museum manager Thomas Lockyear opened up specially for them.
Today, the sheriff's office has grown substantially, with 1,373 agency members, including 586 sworn law enforcement officers and corrections officers, 420 civilians, and 96 civilians.
It has a fleet of vehicles, boats, mobile command posts, aircraft and helicopters. From its original headquarters in Everglades City, the office moved to East Naples around 1962, when the county seat moved.
That event took place in the aftermath of Hurricane Donna, and tropical storms still impact the low-lying Everglades City.
After Monday’s ceremony, standing outside City Hall, the original county courthouse, Everglades City Mayor Howie Grimm Jr. indicated with his hand above his waist how high the storm surge of September’s Hurricane Ian came up.
This year marks the centennial of not only the sheriff’s office, but of Collier County as a separate entity. “Collier County was created on May 8, 1923, when Florida Governor Cary A. Hardee signed Senate Bill 149, Chapter 9362, officially creating Florida State’s 62nd county,” proclaims the Collier County website. The first county commission meeting came on July 7, 1923 at the Rod & Gun Club.
Along with the rest of the county, notably the library and museum systems, the sheriff's office will have additional events through the year to commemorate the 100th anniversary. The sheriff's office hasn't released specific dates.
This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Collier County Sheriff's Office honors centennial, first sheriff
