From Crossroad Towns Remembered

   A dredger cutting the canal from Lake Okeechobee to the Atlantic Ocean, dug up the body of DeSoto Tiger, a Seminole Indian and the son of a Former Seminole chief. The murder of DeSoto Tiger was blamed on John Ashley. Ashley was arrested and was a model prisoner - so much so that when his trial for the murder of DeSoto Tiger began, lawmen did not bother to handcuff him when transferring him from jail to the courthouse. It was during one of these transfers that he broke free, running off into the darkness. Ashley, now a desperado on the run, attempted to hold up a Florida East Coast train. A later hold up of Stuart Bank netted only $4,300 because Ashley and his gang failed to open the cash drawer. Ashley was captured 12 miles southwest of Stuart. Before the trial began, Ashley pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 17½ years in Raiford State Prison. On March 13, 1918, he was sent to a road camp. Three months later he escaped. For the next three years he was a rumrunner and a moonshine still operator. Most of the gang was apprehended at Plant City and in the latter part of 1921 many of the Ashley Gang were incarcerated in a variety of jails throughout Florida. Most of them also escaped. The gang reassembled at Gomez, Martin County, where it took up car stealing, burglaries, hijacking liquor loads and in general terrorizing all of Southeast Florida. John Ashley lived much of the time encamped in the Everglades with his girlfriend, Laura Upthegrove, a brawny Amazon of a woman who packed a.38 caliber revolver strapped to her hip. She was commonly known as "Queen of the Everglades. It was in 1924, when the gang robbed the Pompano Bank of $23,000 and had the audacity to ride down the main street of town shouting "We got it all!"

   The gang decided to go to Jacksonville, where John Ashley's sister, Daisy, lived. In those days the only way up the East Coast was the Dixie Highway, now known as US1. Sheriff Baker asked Sheriff Merritt of St. Lucie County to make the capture of the Ashley Gang at the Sebastian Bridge. The entrance to the bridge was blocked by a chain with a lighted lantern. The deputies waiting in the underbrush along the roadside arrested the gang when they stopped at the bridge. The Ashley Gang members were handcuffed, and had been warned not to make a move. But John Ashley, who was often full of tricks, made a slight move as though to reach for a hidden gun. The deputies fired, killing the entire gang.

This book and hundreds of others on the history and scientific study of the lagoon, are available to the public at the MRC Library of the Indian River Lagoon. Please call (321) 504-4500 for more information.