A crab town on the Barron River
Everglades City sits on the Barron River where the mainland breaks up into the Ten Thousand Islands, about 35 miles south of Naples. Collier County counts 352 permanent residents. The town's Seafood Festival and the county tourism bureau both call it the Stone Crab Capital of the World, and dozens of stone crab fishermen keep their boats on the river.
It started as Everglade, a trading post George W. Storter Jr. opened in 1892, with a post office by 1895. Storter also put up northern visitors who came by yacht to hunt and fish, and his house grew into the Rod and Gun Club. In 1923 the Legislature made the town the seat of the new Collier County, and it was incorporated that year as Everglades. Hurricane Donna hit hard in 1960, the county seat moved to East Naples two years later, and in 1965 the name became Everglades City. The old courthouse now serves as City Hall.
The county tourism bureau credits a local fisherman, Loren Totch Brown, with helping to start the stone crab business. Crabbers used to treat stone crabs as a nuisance that turned up in their blue crab traps. Brown wrote in his memoir that nobody in the country had commercialized them and there ought to be a way. Today Naples, Marco Island and the Everglades together land up to 40 percent of the state's stone crab, and family fish houses still line the waterfront here.
How a claw gets to your plate
Florida's stone crab rules are simple and strict. Only claws are kept, at least 2 7/8 inches, never from a female carrying eggs, and the live crab goes back in the water. Traps may be worked only in daylight. Both claws can legally be taken, but the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission encourages leaving one so the crab can feed and grow the other back faster. Regrowth takes about 18 months.
Claws are boiled right after harvest, on the boat or at the dock, so the meat does not stick to the shell. That is why stone crab is sold already cooked and eaten cold, usually with a mustard sauce or a squeeze of lime. In town, Triad Seafood and City Seafood serve claws on screened porches over the river and sell them to go, and the season opened again on October 15, 2026.
