During my 1 week trip to South Florida I hoped to visit at least several ghost towns, but I was unpleasantly surprised that, despite there are a lot of places on “uninhabited” list, not much left from the former towns there.
Probably, climate and construction techniques are not in favor of ghost towns. Koreshan Park provided the unique opportunity to see the preserved late 19th century buildings and devices, even if it does not have a true ghost town spirit - land is owned by the State Park service.
I was not well prepared this time and only knew that Koreshan was the home of the sect formed in the second part of 19th century and believed that the earth is hollow and we all leave on the inner side. So, when I started listening to the video presentation inside one of the main buildings - I was completely not ready for the story I heard. I even wanted to make a joke that the founder (electricity researcher) was shocked by electricity and got his visions from that when the historian talking in the video told me that Teed was really shocked by the electricity during one of his experiments and experienced the visions of the theory unity believed in.
Koreshanity
Wikipedia gives a pretty detailed description of this Koreshan ideas. The Koreshan founder - Cyrus Reed Teed was a U.S. eclectic physician and alchemist turned into religious leader and messiah for a large community. During one of his experiments with electricity he was shocked almost to the death and claimed later that he had visions of a beautiful woman(God) who revealed the secrets of the universe to him. After this incident he changed his name to “Koresh” and founded the Koreshan Unity.
The Koreshan Unity started in the 1870s in New York, where Teed started preaching his beliefs. He formed short-lived groups in New York City and Moravia. He later moved to Chicago. Teed’s followers formed a commune in Chicago in 1888 called Beth-Ophra. Some followers also formed a short-lived community in San Francisco[2].
Eventually, Teed took his followers to Estero, Florida, to form his “New Jerusalem” in 1894. The community was at its peak 1903-1908, when it had over 250 residents. There were apparently another 4,000 believers around the country. Teed had a vision in which he was to establish a utopian city of 10,000,000 with streets up to 400 feet (120 m) wide. Membership declined following his death in 1908. It built extensively, establishing a bakery, printing house (publishing their newspaper and other publications), the “World College of Life”, a general store, concrete works, power plant (supplying power to the surrounding area years before it was available elsewhere in the region) and more. The colony was extensively landscaped[2].
The core idea of the cult was the cellular cosmogony, or the hollow earth. According to the cellular cosmogony, the earth was not a convex sphere but instead a hollow cell containing the entire universe with the sun at its center and Earth’s populace living on the inside surface of the hollow cell.
After Koresh’s death, the community started to die out (especially after they found out he woul’d not resurrect from dead, as it was believed), but did not break up altogether. Community survived till 1961 when the place was deeded to the State of Florida.
