Coastal Breeze News

By Craig Woodward So, have you been to Karina Island or Pelican Island? Even readers who are very familiar with the Marco Island area and the adjacent 10,000 Islands may ask “Where?” to that question. But even more amazing, for some local residents the answer is not only “Yes,” but that they currently live there. Many others have actually been there often without realizing it! We need to travel back in time 120 years to 1893 and take a peek at a U.S. Coast and Geodetic Nautical Chart of that era to help answer the question. First a little background ... Read More »

By Craig Woodward The former Coconut Island was a traditional place to raft up your boat, along with your friends’ boats, on a lazy Sunday afternoon and have a cookout on the beach while everyone swam and simply relaxed. It was a beautiful location – just north of the future Hideaway Beach, due east of Isles of Capri, situated in the mouth of the Marco River and the view to the west was of the Gulf of Mexico and the setting sun. Hurricane Donna created Coconut Island in 1960 when the south tip of Cannon Island was cut off; over ... Read More »

By Craig Woodward  [email protected]  On Wednesday, November 14, at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, a church which first opened 46 years earlier in November of 1966, many old timers came together to celebrate the life of a Modern Marco pioneer – Helen Tateo. She and her husband, Vince, moved to Marco Island in August of 1966, just a little over a year and a half after the official grand opening of the Island on January 31, 1965. They had first visited in February of 1966 and within eight months moved here permanently, bringing with them their three young sons: Paul, age ... Read More »

COASTAL HISTORY Craig Woodward  [email protected]  As we reflect on a peaceful Veteran’s Day with great weather and our local beaches full, it is hard to envision a time when Florida skies were full of fighter pilots, our coasts under constant watch for enemy attack, and U.S. sailors both dead and wounded were being brought into Florida hospitals. World War II was not only fought in Europe and in the South Pacific, but was also fought here at home. Few remember that Nazi Germany brought WW II literally to our shores, with U-boats (submarines) paroling up and down our coasts looking for ... Read More »

COASTAL HISTORY  Craig Woodward  [email protected] The last few issues of this newspaper have contained excellent articles about Cape Romano, regarding the history of the dome house and the former pyramid house built in the early 1980s. This large point of land is one of Florida’s earliest recognized geographic features similar to Florida’s other large cape, Cape Canaveral. So, let’s investigate the early history of Cape Romano. Our story started 500 years ago when, in 1513, Juan Ponce de Leon sailed up the Southwest Coast of Florida on his first discovery trip of Florida. A few years later in 1521, he returned ... Read More »

The Marco Island Historical Society is pleased to announce a marvelous pair of events for the merry month of May. We invite you to broaden your horizons with a concentration on the history of Fort Myers. On May 1, our regular monthly meeting will begin at 7:00 P.M. in the Rose History Auditorium with our featured speaker Matthew Johnson, Director of Cultural and Historic Affairs or the city of Fort Myers.  His power point presentation will include references to the time 10,000 ago when stone age people inhabited Florida, and will bring us up to date with the ancient Indians of ... Read More »

COASTAL HISTORY  Craig Woodward  [email protected] An article titled “The Headstone Project” was published in this column on October 7, 2011. Donations were requested for the purchase of a headstone for Elizabeth (Lizzie) Weeks Barnes Sawyer. Granny Sawyer, as she was known before her death, was buried in an unmarked grave at the Marco Island Cemetery. She died in 1939, in the middle of the depression and her family had a simple burial at the cemetery, later adding a tabby mortar slab, where her name had once been scratched in the surface. For over half a century there was no visible clue ... Read More »

Craig Woodward  [email protected] The one single document with the greatest impact on the growth and density of Marco Island would be, without a doubt, the “Deltona Settlement Agreement.” This document created much of the current developed and undeveloped “eastern” Marco Island, as well as much of Rookery Bay and also created a great deal of the “951 Corridor” south of U.S. 41. The Agreement was not your normal arm’s length negotiated “deal” but was, in fact, the end result of years of complex litigation between the Deltona Corporation, who were the developers of Marco Island and of Marco Shores, and ... Read More »

COASTAL HISTORY  Craig Woodward  [email protected] The first full time minister in Southwest Florida was George W. Gatewood. Before Reverend Gatewood, at age 24, came to scout out the area in 1886, there had been traveling Protestant preachers who held periodic revivals as well as Roman Catholic priests, from Key West, who came to the Chokoloskee area to attend to the spiritual needs of the Santini family and other Catholics; but none of them actually resided here. In the late 1800s, Key West was the principal city of the area and a number of the Conchs were Methodists. “Conchs” being the name ... Read More »

Submitted by Everglades Historical Society  Imagine not being able to obtain a deed to property on which you have built a house and lived in for years! That was just one of the problems faced by pioneering settlers in “Florida’s Last Frontier”. Surveyors faced myriad obstacles such as shifting coastlines and, of course, mosquitoes. Meanwhile, the State was transferring vast tracts of land to railroad companies without regard to pioneers’ homestead rights. To learn more about early attempts to establish property boundaries and obtain titles, you can attend an illustrated presentation: “Surveying Problems in the Ten Thousand Islands” on Friday, February ... Read More »

Submitted by Friends of Fakahatchee  Join us for a really unique “Olde Florida” treat. The Friends of Fakahatchee are hosting Coastal Cruises through the mysterious mangroves of the Ten Thousands Island. On the way, you will probably see dolphins cavorting with the tour boat. When you arrive at Fakahatchee Island, a naturalist will point out unusual plants on the path up the ancient shell mound to the old cemetery. On the return journey, the boat passes by a famous rookery where the birds will be settling down for the evening. We might think of “Fakahatchee” as a swamp with Ghost Orchids ... Read More »

Craig Woodward [email protected] While most know that the Spanish discovered Florida and that the U.S. later purchased it from Spain, few know that for 20 years England owned and controlled the state, which they divided into East Florida (the peninsula) with its headquarters in St. Augustine, and West Florida (the panhandle) with its headquarters in Pensacola. These twenty years were a critical time for the U.S – from 1763 to 1783 – the years encompassing the American Revolution, a time when life might have been much easier if an ally like Spain and not England controlled the area south of ... Read More »

Craig Woodward During World War II, the U.S. Army Air Corps constructed training bases in Florida to try to fill the tremendous need for pilots and gunnery crews to fight in Europe. By the end of the war a total of 54 bases had been constructed with thousands of military men and women introduced to the Sunshine State for the first time. Buckingham Army Air Field, just east of Ft. Myers, opened in 1943 as home to the 2117th AAF Base Unit – a Flexible Gunnery Training Squadron. The air field was built for heavy bombers like the B-17, better ... Read More »

Craig Woodward  It was like an episode from PBS’s popular TV show – History Detectives, a local historical item with a large mystery behind it. The item: a very rare envelope with a most unique cancellation showing it was postmarked at Malco Florida and mailed in 1890 to a St. Clair Whitman of Cedar Keys, Florida. “Malco” was the official name of the first post office established on Marco Island October 20, 1888 at the request of Capt. W.D. “Bill” Collier (the builder of the Old Marco Inn). Capt. Collier, when asked why the name was “Malco,” said the post ... Read More »

Craig Woodward  I appreciate the many people who commented or called about the last article written about John Weeks and his family. One point that concerned readers was the comment that his wife, Elizabeth (Lizzie) Weeks Sawyer was buried in an unmarked grave at the Marco Cemetery. Clearly the wife of the first settler of Collier County, who moved here in 1862, deserves more recognition. Lizzie died in 1939 in the middle of the depression and although there were four generations of Weeks living on the Island at the time, the family was not affluent. However, her grave site is ... Read More »

By Craig Woodward Collier County’s First Permanent Settler – John J. Weeks Obviously, there were numerous Calusa, Seminole and other Indians who have lived here for centuries, so we need to narrow the question: who was the first permanent white settler of present times, “permanent” meaning someone whose family members still reside in Collier County. The answer is clearly John J. Weeks, who moved to what would later become Collier County in 1862. What brought him here? How did he make a living? Where did he live? If you read the last article published in this column regarding the incident at ... Read More »

By Craig Woodward If you are a frequent reader of this column you know that the last issue mentioned how Lostman’s Key and River were named. That information piqued my interest into researching this story and finding out more of the details. It turns out that the villain in the story was a notorious character in Southwest Florida around the late 1800s. Captain Jocelyn (also sometimes spelled Joselyn) was described in 1875 as having “fame in Florida rivaling that of the most bloodthirsty pirate of the China Seas.” While he claimed to be an Englishman from Plymouth, the locals believed ... Read More »

By Craig Woodward A few issues back I wrote an article about a former settlement known as “Grocery Place,” now located in Collier Seminole State Park, and pondered about how this name came to be given to such a remote location considering it was never a place to get groceries! As it turns out, persistence paid off, as a series of four articles written in January of 1927 for The Koreshan Unity’s newspaper “The American Eagle,” published in Estero, provided the answer: Grocery and Sugar Bays, at the entrance to Palm River, were “named by a mishap to the supplies of ... Read More »

COLLIER COUNTY’S FIRST SHERIFF By Craig Woodward It was a case of history repeating itself and, frankly, sort of surreal:flying 2,000 feet over Marco Island with Wayne Riley Maynard taking aerial photos out of the pilot’s window as his son and co-pilot, Ryan, flew the single engine Cessna we were in, a repeat of what had occurred exactly 85 years earlier when their respective Grandfather and Great Grandfather, the first Sheriff of Collier County, William Riley Maynard, also flew a single engine plane, shooting the first ever aerial photos of Marco Island in 1926! I had written my December 2010 ... Read More »

By Craig Woodward Time to announce the BIG WINNERS…. Drum roll…… and they are…… (in no particular order): Roy Bartlett, Lou Woessner, Tara O’Neill, Diane Chestnut and Roy Radlovacki!! We gave up trying to select Grand, First, Second, and Third place winners as everyone was coming in so close on scores. So, the major gifts, certificates from Bistro Soleil, The Blue Heron, Café de Marco and DaVinci’s were supplied by Coastal Breeze News and were randomly given out to these winners. Further prizes of Marco Movie tickets, the Chamber’s Marco History Books, etc. were given out to many other winners. ... Read More »