History-205 No. 1

Howard Fine

Source: Collier County Museum—Haldeman Library—Naples, Florida

Recorded clam harvesting on the southwest coast of Florida began in 1880.  A rich bed of hard clams, southern quahogs had been discovered.  The bed was approximately forty miles long and five miles wide stretching from Gullivans Bay to Shark Point.  Two canneries were built on Marco Island to utilize the clams.  The E.S. Burnham Cannery was the smaller of the two businesses.  It was built in 1903 and was operated at Caxambas until 1929.  The Doxsee Clam Cannery was built in 1911 and was operated until 1947 when the supply of clams diminished to a point at which it was no longer feasible economically to continue.

The Doxsee Clam Cannery was owned by J. Harvey Doxsee.  His family had been canning the northern quahog clam in Islip, Long Island, since 1867 and in North Carolina since 1900.  The northern quahog beds were being depleted while their price was rising.  Captain W.D. “Bill” Collier of Marco Island invited Doxsee to come to look over the area as a site for the cannery.  Doxsee came to Marco Island in 1910 and Collier gave him property on which to build at Marco.  The cannery was built and operations were begun in 1911.  The building was a corrugated galvanized iron structure set on a cement floor.  The L-shaped building had a dock that ran the length of it with another dock butting up to it.  The interior was barn-like with an office built in the angel of the L.  A large cistern was built to hold rainwater from the roof.  Water was later piped in from two miles south where surface well water was usable.  Fresh water was very important since it was used in the steaming of the clams and in the preparation of the clam products. 

The clams were dug by hand prior to 1908. They were stirred from the muddy bottom by leather or canvas covered feet.  A two-pronged digger was used to pick the clams up with.  Workers pulled a small flat-bottomed scow or skiff behind them.  When the skiff was filled with clams, the worker would wade back to shore with them.  The clams were cached in the shallow water near shore until a “run boat” came to get them.  This method of harvesting was limited to calm, shallow water and low tide.  Still, it was not unusual for a worker to have eight to ten bushel to load on the “run boat.”  Count was tallied and registered by the captain of the boat; the “runs” were made daily.  Workers received twenty-five cents per bushel of clams.  The record for a single day was fifty-two bushels of clams.  Many workers camped outthrough the week on Little Pavillion Key.  Captain Bill Collier invented a clam dredge in 1908 and had it built in Tampa.  The dredge was used in water to twelve feet in depth.  It was about ninety feet long, twenty feet wide and was two stories high.  A machinery room was at one end of the dredge, the digger in the middle and storage for the clams at the opposite end.  Sleeping quarters for the crew and a mess hall were on the second story.  The dredge was driven by a thirty-six horse power gasoline driven engine.  The gasoline for the engine was shipped by boat in tanks from Punta Gorda prior to the arrival of the Atlantic Coast Railway in 1927.

Clams were deposited from the digger along with shells, mud and debris on a conveyor belt just below the water line.  This cleaned the clams slightly.  Four men stood at the top of the belt to sort the live clams into bushel baskets.  Another man rolled the full baskets on a small car to the back of the dredge.  The clams were dumped into the “run boats” for the return “run” to the cannery.  The dredge operated twenty-four hours a day.  A full crew consisted of a captain, engineer, cook, rope or anchor man, men to pick the clams off the conveyor and a “carry-away” man to handle the baskets.  Full of clams the baskets weighed up to one-hundred-twenty-five pounds each.

The dredge had a twelve-hundred foot anchor line of metal-cable attached to an eight-hundred pound anchor.  The dredge was allowed to ride out the full length of the cable, drifting with the wind and tide.  The process was then reversed with the cable being drawn in.  This was called a run.  As many as one-hundred-twenty of the five peck baskets of clams were brought in on one run and three-hundred fifty to four-hundred-fifty baskets a day.

As the full “runboats” were sighted nearing Marco, a whistle would blow to let people know that it was time to come to work.  Clams were shoveled from the “run boat” on to a dockside bucket conveyor which took them through a cylinder filled with water to rinse the grit from them, into a steam box where they were steamed open.  The liquid was collected for use in the various clam products in another tank below the steam box.  The clams were placed on sorting tables where the meat was picked out and placed in buckets.  The shells were carried out on a diversionary belt.  The clams’ meat was put through another thorough washing then placed on another conveyor where they were picked over for color and size which dictated their final use.   Canning was done in huge steam retorts which could handle several hundred cans at a time.  The cans were cooled over night and labeled and boxed for shipping the following day.  They were taken by boat to Key West for shipping via Mallory Lines, a coast-wide steamship company, which took them to New York for distribution.

In August of 1923, it was noted that “little neck clams,” steamed clams, minced clams, clam chowder, and plain and concentrated clam juice was being prepared.  Vegetables for use in the chowder were brought in from Key West. 

Mrs. Hazel Griffin recalls working at the Doxsee Cannery during a vacation when she was attending the University of Florida at Gainesville.  She was paid twenty-one cents an hour.  This was in 1924.  Her husband, Alto Griffin did independent contracting for Doxsee.  He hauled cord wood for the boilers.  His family had a Model-T Ford truck to haul it to the ferry.  The flat bed ferry took the wood across Henderson Creek to Marco where it was placed in wheelbarrows and wheeled to the cannery.  The first time that the Griffins used the ferry as a truck ferry, they had to put up one hundred dollars as a deposit in case the truck tipped the ferry over.  This use of the ferry was quite an accomplishment as the truck could be driven off the ferry and up the road to the cannery.  Mr. Griffin also worked on the dredge when it experienced mechanical breakdowns and the steam engine that had been purchased by Doxsee.  The steam engine had been made in Switzerland.  It was previously owned by the Diamond Match Company in South Carolina.  It generated power and light for the cannery.             

Mr. Griffin was working on the huge steam engine one day when a man asked him for a serial number on the engine.  The man was Henry Ford.  He was interested in purchasing the engine for his museum at Greenfield Village, Dearborn, Michigan.  Mr. Doxsee was not interested in selling the machine according to Mr. Griffin.

Nicknamed “Stud,” Doxsee was an independent person described as vigorous, zestful, and energetic.  Known for his colorful, earthy language, he appeared uncomfortable in suit and tie giving a speech.  He was a stout man with a large frame and a likeable personality.  Doxsee bought the rights to the clam dredge from Collier.  When the Burnham dredge sank in a storm in 1929 Doxsee owned the only remaining dredge.