A series of dams blocked up the lakes and streams that meandered through the marshy property. 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. The rich and famous flocked to Palm Beach and Miami to see his hair-raising stunts. He entertained dukes and duchesses, senators and congressman, Vanderbilts and Carnegies. This guy was Crocodile Dundee before Crocodile Dundee. Give ‘em a little rasslin’ match with the man-eating reptiles. He would put on a little show for the tourists. Joe would capture the gators and crocodiles himself. 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. 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. In 2014 he produced and directed the smash-hit "I’ll Say She Is", the first ever revival of the Marx Brothers hit 1924 Broadway show in the NY International Fringe Festival.The Alligator Wrestler’s Farms in Palm Beach and Miami Attracted Florida’s First Snowbirds Alligator Joe and his pets (Detroit Publishing Company Collection)īefore there was Disney World, Sea World, and Universal Studios, the most famous tourist attraction in Florida was “Alligator Joe’s Crocodile and Alligator Farm.”īack in the 1890s and early 1900s, “Alligator Joe” operated two farms that attracted Florida’s first snowbirds.
He has directed his own plays, revues and solo pieces at such venues as Joe’s Pub, La Mama, HERE, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, the Ohio Theatre, the Brick, and 6 separate shows in the NY International Fringe Festival. Trav has been in the vanguard of New York’s vaudeville and burlesque scenes since 1995 when he launched his company Mountebanks, presenting hundreds of acts ranging from Todd Robbins to Dirty Martini to Tammy Faye Starlite to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. He has written for the NY Times, the Village Voice, American Theatre, Time Out NY, Reason, the Villager and numerous other publications.
(is best known for his books "No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous" (2005) and "Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube" (2013).
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