9 minute read
Published Friday, June 12, 2026 · The Hawley Team at Keller Williams Fort Myers and the Islands
AT A GLANCE
- Flag Day is tomorrow, June 14. The same date is the birthday of the U.S. Army, which turns 251. The flag turns 249. The country turns 250 on July 4. Three landmark birthdays in one month.
- Southwest Florida was literally founded as a fort. Fort Myers was a real U.S. Army post, established February 20, 1850, on the Caloosahatchee River.
- Two Flag Day ceremonies this weekend: Cape Coral at the Four Mile Cove Veterans Memorial Area (Sunday, June 14, 9:00 AM) and the Collier County Veterans Council at Freedom Memorial Park in Naples.
- This is not a market post. It is a family and community post, four generations of the Hawley family under one flag, and an invitation to mark the weekend with us.
This is not a market post. This is a family post, a community post, and a thank-you. It is also an invitation.
The flag turns 249. The Army turns 251. The country turns 250.
On June 14, 1777, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, passed a brief resolution that read in full: "Resolved, that the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white, that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation." That single sentence is the legal birth of the American flag. We have been adding stars and rearranging them for two and a half centuries, but every flag flying over every house in Cape Coral, Fort Myers, Naples, Estero, Sanibel, and Bonita Springs traces its lineage to that paragraph.
Two years before the flag, the Continental Congress had created something else on the same June 14 date. On June 14, 1775, Congress voted to raise ten companies of riflemen for the common defense of the colonies. That vote is the birth of the United States Army. The Army turned 250 last year. The flag turns 249 tomorrow. The country itself turns 250 on July 4. The three anniversaries fall within twenty days of each other this summer, which is why the patriotic energy in 2026 feels different. Three of the most consequential birthdays in American history are landing in the same month.
Flag Day became an official observance in 1949, when President Truman signed it into law. It is not a federal holiday. Banks stay open. Schools, if they were in session, would still meet. There is no day off. Maybe that is the right way to honor it. The flag does not ask for a day off. It asks to be flown.
Southwest Florida was literally founded as a fort.
A lot of people who move here from elsewhere assume the name "Fort Myers" is decorative, the way "Tampa Bay" is just a body of water and a hockey team. It is not. Fort Myers was an actual U.S. Army post, established on February 20, 1850, on the south bank of the Caloosahatchee River. Major Samuel C. Ridgely built the fort on the burned ruins of an earlier post called Fort Harvie. At its peak the fort covered 139 acres and included 57 buildings, a two-story blockhouse, and a thousand-foot wharf for Army supply ships coming up the river. It was a working military installation during the Third Seminole War.
The fort was named in honor of Brevet Colonel Abraham Charles Myers, who served as quartermaster of the Army's Department of Florida. Most of us locally have been told that Col. Myers was the commanding officer of the fort, but the historical record is a little more textured than that. Col. Myers was a logistics officer, and the naming honor came in part because he was the son-in-law of Major David E. Twiggs, the senior officer at Fort Brooke in Tampa who ordered the post built. The story is part recognition of Myers's quartermaster work and part family politics. Either way, the city that grew up around the fort kept the name, and we kept it again when we restored "Fort" to the city's name in 1901.
The point is this. When you fly a flag in Fort Myers, you are flying it in a town that was named for a U.S. Army officer, built by U.S. Army soldiers, and supplied by U.S. Army ships. The military thread is not borrowed here. It is original.
If you want to go deeper, Legends of America has a full history of the Fort Myers military post, including some really old and very interesting pictures of the original fort that are well worth a look.
Where to mark Flag Day in SWFL this weekend
If you want to be somewhere with other Americans tomorrow morning, here are two we can point you to.
Cape Coral Flag Day Ceremony. Sunday, June 14, at 9:00 AM, at the Veterans Memorial Area inside the Four Mile Cove Ecological Preserve, 2500 SE 24th Street. The ceremony is open to the public and no reservation is required. The Veterans Memorial Area is a quiet, beautiful spot on the water, and the morning ceremony is the right place to take the kids or the grandkids if you want them to see what reverence for the flag looks like in person.
Collier County Veterans Council Flag Day Ceremony. Held at Freedom Memorial Park in Naples, at the northeast corner of Golden Gate Parkway and Goodlette-Frank Road. In past years the Boy Scouts of America have demonstrated proper flag folding at 5:00 PM, accepted worn flags from the public for proper retirement, and the formal ceremony has begun at 6:00 PM with the Pledge of Allegiance and an invocation. If you plan to go, check the Collier County Veterans Council's site at collier-county-veterans-council.org to confirm this year's exact time.
For events tied to America's 250th anniversary specifically, the state of Florida has set up an official hub at america250FL.com that lists exhibits, lectures, and community celebrations across the state through July 4. Worth bookmarking for the next three weeks.
What 250 years looks like from where Kim and I sit
This year is the year I want to stop and write about my family. So bear with me. This is the part of the post that is just us.
My grandfather homesteaded land in what is now Cape Coral and North Fort Myers, back when the federal government was still granting homestead claims in Florida. He came down here, worked the land, and proved it up under his own name. The Homestead Act of 1862 was the largest land-redistribution program in American history. It was Abraham Lincoln's promise that any American who would work a piece of ground for five years could call it his or her own. My grandfather lived that exact promise. The dirt he proved up is the same dirt that is now part of one of the fastest-growing cities in Florida. When I help a young family buy a first home in Cape Coral in 2026, I am, in some small way, helping them claim the next chapter of the same story my grandfather started.
My grandfather's son, my immediate grandfather, played as a boy on the seawall of the Edison and Ford winter estates in Fort Myers. My Uncle Jimmy left recordings of those stories. He used to get in trouble with Mr. Edison for being on the property where the boys had no business being. He also talked about how kind Mrs. Edison was. She would catch them on the property and, instead of running them off, she would give them cookies. We have those recordings. They are some of my family's most treasured belongings. The same estates that draw tourists from around the world today were just a place where local boys snuck in to play. That is what it means to be from somewhere.
Kim's two grandfathers both served in World War II. One served in the Pacific theater. The other landed in Normandy in the days after the D-Day invasion of June 6, 1944. They both came home, raised families, and lived out the lives they had fought to make possible. When the flag is run up the pole tomorrow, those are two of the men we will be thinking of.
Our two boys have worn the uniform of the United States Navy. That is the part Kim and I do not talk about much in public. We are proud of them in a way that is hard to put into words. The flag they served under is the same flag my Uncle Jimmy saluted, the same flag Kim's grandfathers came home to, and the same flag my homesteading great-grandfather raised over the first house he built on land he had proved up. Four generations. One flag.
The American Dream still has a deed attached to it
The reason this matters for a real estate blog is that the American Dream and homeownership have been entangled from the very beginning. The Homestead Act made land ownership the literal mechanism by which a person became a full participant in the American experiment. You worked the ground. You proved it up. You owned it. That was the deal.
Two hundred and fifty years in, the mechanism has changed. The land is platted. The dirt has been improved. The deed comes from a title company instead of a federal land office. But the underlying promise has not changed at all. You work for it. You sign for it. You own it. And what you own is a piece of America.
When somebody from Ohio or Michigan or New York calls us looking for a house in Cape Coral or Estero or Bonita Springs, they are not just looking for a place to escape the cold. They are looking for the same thing my grandfather was looking for when he homesteaded this land. A piece of ground with their name on it, in a country worth being part of.
That is what we sell. We just call it a house.
A small request for tomorrow
Fly a flag tomorrow. If you do not own one, the hardware stores in Cape Coral and Fort Myers and Naples have them in stock all week, and a six-by-ten Stars and Stripes for the front porch will run you about thirty dollars. Hang it before sunrise on Sunday morning. Take it down at sunset. Or, if you light it properly, leave it up all summer through the Fourth.
If you have an old flag in the garage that is faded or torn, take it to either of the two ceremonies above. They will retire it properly.
If you have a child or a grandchild who has never been to Freedom Memorial Park or to the Four Mile Cove Veterans Memorial Area, take them this weekend. The story of this country only gets passed down because we pass it down.
Happy Flag Day. Happy birthday, U.S. Army. And happy almost-birthday, America. Two hundred and fifty years in, you are still the best deal going.
Kim and Martin Hawley are Realtors with The Hawley Team at Keller Williams Fort Myers and the Islands. When you are ready to find your piece of Southwest Florida, we are here.
(239) 420-9027 | martin@teamhawley.com | teamhawley.com
Sources and further reading
City of Cape Coral, 2026 Flag Day Celebration: capecoral.gov
Collier County Veterans Council: collier-county-veterans-council.org
America250 Florida official hub: america250fl.com
Fort Myers, Florida history: City of Fort Myers historical records and Wikipedia entries verified June 2026
Continental Congress flag resolution of June 14, 1777, and Continental Army resolution of June 14, 1775: Library of Congress
