The Bass Biological Laboratory and Zoological Research Supply Facility Company was established on this site circa 1931 by John Foster Bass, Jr. (1897-1939) and his wife Else Bass (1898-1973). As the first full-time marine station on the Florida mainland, its mission was to promote scientific marine exploration in southwest Florida. The laboratory supported science education by providing fellowships to eminent naturalists, biologists, and zoologists, who identified at least 470 marine and terrestrial animals. Although the Bass family maintained the property until the mid-1980s, the Bass Lab ceased operations in 1944. The complex included laboratories, a workshop, a house for internationally distinguished scientists, a water tower, a windmill, a boathouse, and a series of log cabins set among saw palmettos and slash pines. The first and smallest cabin, the "Cookie House," served as John Bass's lab and office. It used a building technique popular in Wisconsin but extremely rare in Florida called stovewood construction, which used cross-section cuts of wood resembling cookies when mounted in mortar. The cabin was moved from this site to the Cedar Point Environmental Park in 2006.