LEE COUNTY, Fla. — Tucked near the heart of Estero is Koreshan State Park—which has a history so unusual you have to hear it to believe it.
So to learn more about this land—and the people who lived here and inspired the name—we took a tour with Florida Gulf Coast University professor Lyn Millner.
Millner wrote a book, "The Allure of Immortality: An American Cult, a Florida Swamp, and a Renegade Prophet," about the Koreshan Unity settlement.
It was started by a man named Cyrus Teed, whose first name translates to "Koresh" in Persian.
"He was a doctor of eclectic medicine, and he believed that he was a messiah sent to redeem humanity," said Millner.
Millner said by the late 1800s; Teed had convinced a group of others of the same thing. And eventually, they all began living together in a Chicago mansion.
"And then he started having trouble with creditors; you know there were bills to pay. And he started having trouble with husbands, who were angry with him because their wives had left them to join Cyrus Teed," said Millner.
And those troubles led Teed to Southwest Florida.
"He hears about some land in Florida, and he comes down to see it, and that land did not pan out. But what did pan out was there was an old German homesteader who had come to homestead this land in the 1880s, and that homesteader had lost everything," said Millner.
According to Millner, it didn't take long for Teed to convince that homesteader, Gustav Damkohler, that he was the Messiah.
Soon after, Teed and his Chicago following moved down, took over, and began building.
One of the last major structures to be built was the Art Hall. The preserved building was used for religious services and musical gatherings. It also holds information and artifacts central to the Koreshan belief system—which Millner said gave followers comfort at a time when the world felt confusing.
"At the time, science and religion were at odds. And people were freaking out because their faith and their science no longer jived. And here was this guy that said 'God doesn't give us anything we can't understand. I have a way, I have something called 'Religio-science' that bridges religion and science. You don't have to worry anymore, I have the answers,'" she said.
"So he did that, he had his religion-science and then he had this and this is a perfect symbol of how 'God wouldn't create anything we couldn't understand.' The entire universe is contained inside of a hollow earth. We stand on the edges of that, looking in at the sun, the moon, the planets, the entire cosmos, and there's just nothingness outside."
Research shows the community also believed they'd achieve immortality through celibacy and live forever in utopia. All over the 200-acre Estero property is evidence of the hard work that believers put toward that plan—which included building out a home for Teed that doubled as a school and a dental office.
There was also a "Planetary Court"—where seven women, appointed to leadership within the settlement, lived.
At their height, the Koreshans were 250-strong and self-sustaining under Teed's leadership until he died in 1908.
"They believed he was coming back to life," said Millner.
When Teed inevitably didn't come back, the numbers started to dwindle.
But Millner said a new book called "Waco" by author Jeff Guinn shows that Teed did live on in an unexpected way.
"So these believers hung on, they were declining, they were aging, and in the 30s called 'Koreshanity' and it laid out Cyrus Teed's credentials and his major beliefs. Somehow in the 1980s, this book makes its way to the Waco McLennan County Public Library," she said.
According to Guinn's new book, David Koresh of the Branch Davidian religious sect got his inspiration from Teed without realizing he was plagiarizing.
He was apparently fed the information by a lover without knowing the source.
"Koresh's predecessor, a woman named Lois Roden, had been cribbing from Cyrus Teed for years, some of his philosophies and prophecies; that's what made her the leader. And David Koresh, almost word for word--he is 'the lamb,' He is going to do all these wonderful things straight from Cyrus Teed in Estero, Florida," said Guinn.
And according to this new information, David Koresh only found out about the Teed and the "Koreshanity" book during the deadly 1993 Waco siege.
"When I started going through the negotiator tapes between the FBI and Koresh, the conversations they were having. I noticed a couple of pages, there were 60,000 pages, and two of them in particular, where the FBI mentioned that they had a book about another Koresh," said Guinn.
"And the FBI says, 'It seems like you've just taken a page from this guy Cyrus Teed. Some of this is straight out of Teed.' He's like, 'send it in.' And I believe if they had, lives would have been saved," said Millner.
Milner said it's a connection and legacy that should serve as a reminder to all of us—to step outside of ourselves and our own beliefs. And to listen to others, especially when we don't agree.
"When we identify another group that doesn't necessarily agree with what we believe. There needs to be more conversation. Right now, what's happening is total dismissal," she said.
