Life and Death on the Loxahatchee

"Life and Death on the Loxahatchee" is both the story of a real-life “Tarzan” and the people who grew up with him along Florida’s first wild and scenic river. Vince Nelson was unique, but also a symbol of all those who fished, trapped, ploughed and hammered out hardscrabble lives on the Jupiter-Tequesta riverfront in the days before it became golf courses and mega-mansions. Who was Trapper Nelson? He was born in 1908, the sickly son of a landless Polish peasant. Over the next sixty years he would wrest from the wilderness eleven hundred acres along Florida’s most breathtaking jungle river. Along his life’s journey Nelson became the Legend of the Loxahatchee, with as many faces as the people who thought they knew him. Hobo, trapper, hunter, alligator wrestler, gambler, celebrity host, charmer of snakes and women alike, this modern Tarzan’s life ended as mysteriously as he had lived it. On a steamy July day in 1968, a friend found Trapper Nelson dead in his jungle paradise, his torso torn open by a shotgun blast. Many people had a motive. So did Trapper himself. Draw your own conclusions as you read interviews with his family, friends, and those who insist that his spirit still roams the old campsite.