Sunshine State Stories: Alligator Joe

The Alligator Wrestler’s Farms in Palm Beach and Miami Attracted Florida’s First Snowbirds

Before there was Disney World, Sea World, and Universal Studios, the most famous tourist attraction in Florida was “Alligator Joe’s Crocodile and Alligator Farm.”

Back in the 1890s and early 1900s, “Alligator Joe” operated two farms that attracted Florida’s first snowbirds.  One was located in Palm Beach on the current site of the exclusive Everglades Club near Worth Avenue, while the other was in Miami at the junction of the Miami River and Wagner Creek.

Tourist boats would make stops along the Miami River, and wicker wheelchair drivers would push wealthy vacationers down the forbidding Jungle Trail Road in Palm Beach to see Alligator Joe’s collection of gators, crocodiles, manatees, sea turtles, and other creatures that inhabited South Florida’s untamed, swampy wilderness.  Joe would capture the gators and crocodiles himself.  He would put on a little show for the tourists. Give ‘em a little rasslin’ match with the man-eating reptiles. This guy was Crocodile Dundee before Crocodile Dundee. He entertained dukes and duchesses, senators and congressman, Vanderbilts and Carnegies. The rich and famous flocked to Palm Beach and Miami to see his hair-raising stunts.

The Palm Beach farm was set in a tropical jungle about a mile from the ocean among log huts, palm-leaf pavilions, rubber trees, palmettos, and cocoa palms. A series of dams blocked up the lakes and streams that meandered through the marshy property. Visitors to the farm could see the famed Alligator Joe walking around his alligator coups without any fear—with only a wooden fence separating them from the terrifying carnivores.

Alligator Joe’s menagerie of reptiles may have been the largest in the world. At one time, it contained more than 4,000 gators and crocodiles, including his prize catch—a mammoth crocodile that was over 17-feet long and weighed 1,700 pounds. Dubbed “Miami Joe,” this man-eater was rumored to have thrown up human bones and clothing and may have devoured several Seminole Indians who tried to capture it.

Born Warren Frazee in Jacksonville in 1873, Alligator Joe was a Florida original. His father, Randolph, a farmer and part-time bartender, helped manage his son’s businesses. Asked by the Bradford County Telegraph in 1895 what led his son to take up such a hazardous profession, the elder Frazee replied that young Warren always liked adventure.

“I never could keep that boy out of the woods. Ever since he was eight-years old, he’d strap a skillet and a rifle on his back and take to the woods and not turn up for days and days.”

These excursions would help the future Alligator Joe become quite familiar with the habits of the gators and crocodiles that inhabited the Florida swamps. Years later, he would impart this knowledge to his farms’ visitors. He knew where the gators and crocs lived and how they stalked their prey. He knew their mating habits. He observed their hatching process—crocodiles like sandy places for laying their eggs; alligators like swampy areas.  In 1907, there were more than 1,800 eggs ready to be hatched on his Palm Beach farm. He became such an expert that he rarely lost an egg. Gator eggs were sold to aquariums for 50 cents apiece and terrapin eggs for 25 cents. He told guests that alligator eggs were a delicacy and that he put them on his toast every morning. The astonished tourists’ eyes almost popped out.

A lot of Suitcases and Handbags

A good businessman, Joe made even more money by selling gator hides– getting $500 for them. That’s a lot of suitcases and handbags.  In a good year, he would earn about $2,500, which would amount to approximately $67,000 today. Not bad for an occupation that was “fun” to him.

Armed with a long gaff hook, several coils of rope, two long poles, a crowbar and a spade, he would take parties of sportsmen on expeditions to slay alligators. For a not-too-modest fee of $25, he once took a New York Sun reporter on an alligator hunt through the Everglades. Weighing over 300 pounds and wearing trousers with suspenders, Joe didn’t look the part of an alligator-slayer. The skeptical Sun reporter was not impressed with Joe, saying that he “had a face and eye that did not inspire confidence.”  The journalist would soon be proven wrong.

The alligator hunt did not start out well. Joe was having no luck, and the doubting scribe began to wonder if he was “being led on a fool’s errand.” But Joe had a few tricks up his sleeve. He had studied gators so well that he always seemed to know their next move.

Using a little deception, Joe lured a mother gator from the muddy depths by imitating the noise made by baby gators when in distress. “Oonk, oonk, oonk,” he cried out.  Suddenly a monstrous head emerged. Joe quickly threw his gaff hook directly under the mother gator’s throat. Then the two started rolling around in the muck. After a few minutes of grappling, Joe grabbed a rope and noose that was attached to a pole. “Like a cowboy lassoing a steer on the plains,” he threw the noose over the gator’s head, tying her jaws firmly together.  With a long pole, he wrapped several ropes around her body until she was tied up in a splint, and then he pulled her to dry land. Once out of the water, she became docile.  The gator seemed all tired out while Joe showed no signs of exhaustion. It was game, set, match, Alligator Joe. “Thank you very much, suh!” Joe said as he collected his fee from the Yankee reporter.

Asked by the Inter-Ocean newspaper of Chicago how he was able to capture the hissing, snapping man-eaters, Joe replied, “It’s like eating pie. An alligator is as innocent as a lamb if you take him right, and take him before he takes you.”

Joe was good at his trade and he knew it. He had an ego as big as his waistline. One year, during a trip north, he ended up in a Washington D.C. emergency room with a case of gastritis. While being treated, he expressed shock and disbelief that his D.C. doctors had never heard of the famous Alligator Joe.

Tall Tales

Joe was also known for telling tall tales—if you had the patience and desire to listen to them, one writer said. In a countrified southern accent, Joe would regale tourists with gator-hunting stories.  He told one tale about a pal by the name of Tom Pucker who captured a gator by using his own wooden leg as bait.  Tom’s wooden leg was studded with nails, so when the gator took a bite out of it, the nails penetrated its jaw and became lodged in its throat. Tom then unscrewed his leg, and the gator was an easy catch.  

When one visitor to his farm asked if it cost a lot to feed alligators, Joe replied, “Oh, they eat each other when they’se hungry. And if half of them’s that born grows up, my profit is good, cause I ain’t fed ‘em anything but their brothers and sisters.” 

 

In the summers, Alligator Joe would escape the Florida heat and take his show on the road. He would load up three railroad cars with gators, crocodiles, sea turtles, coconut trees, and other sub-tropical shrubbery and transport his mini-zoos to amusement parks throughout the United States. He was at Steel Pier in Atlantic City in 1903. In 1906, the show went to Electric Park in Kansas City, which was the park that inspired Walt Disney to create Disneyland. Then it was on to Wonderland Park in Revere Beach, Massachusetts in 1907, Dreamland Park at Coney Island in 1910, and Forest Park in Chicago in 1912.

The legend of Alligator Joe swept through the country.

The Wedding of the Century

In October 1909, Alligator Joe married a Missouri woman at Electric Park; it was the wedding of the century.

The bride, Miss Cleopatra Croff, made a triumphant entry by motorcar as brass bands played. The soon-to-be Mrs. Alligator Joe scattered white rose petals on the guests, while the groom held a gator in his arms while wearing white gloves.

A carnival barker hawked tickets at the door:

“One dime to see the wedding of the famous Alligator Joe.”

A crowd of over 1,000 curiosity-seekers poured in.

The nuptials took place on a flimsy platform that overlooked a tank-full of blood-thirsty reptiles.  A searchlight shined upon the happy couple. Once the vows were said, Joe grabbed one of the gators from the tank below and gave the crowd a show just like any other night.

The couple became quite the celebrities.  At a ceremony at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in May 1910, Joe presented one of his gators – “Little Coney” as a mascot for the newly-christened battleship Florida.

In June 1910, Cleopatra’s photograph was in the New York World, holding a young gator named “Sam” whom she had nursed back to health on a trip from Florida to Coney Island. On the long train ride, many of the gators had died—victims of salt-water disease, but Mrs. Alligator Joe had taken a special interest in little Sam, bringing him into her Pullman car where she took care of him. Sam showed his gratitude by not leaving her side.  He rarely associated with the other gators.

The World’s Fair

Perhaps the crowning achievement of Alligator Joe’s career was when he performed at the World’s Fair in San Francisco in 1915—officially called the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. There among the exhibits showing off America’s technological and economic progress was Alligator Joe’s alligator farm.

But it was in San Francisco that tragedy struck. No, Alligator Joe didn’t fall victim to one of his “pets”; he was victimized by diabetes, fatty degeneration of the heart, and tonsillitis. He died of pneumonia on May 31, 1915, at the age of 42. He was survived by his wife and a 3-year-old son.

His estate was valued at $5,295, which would be about $129,000 today and consisted of:

• 148 alligators – $2,000

• 25 crocodiles – $2,700

• 500 baby alligators – $250

• 1 sea turtle – $25

• 9 pelicans, 6 herons, 2 ducks, and 2 raccoons

Sadly, Florida had lost one of its great tourist attractions, but Alligator Joe would be remembered throughout the Sunshine State, as over the years, a number of restaurants and bars would be named for him. As Alligator Joe once said himself— he had many imitators, but no equals.