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Sarasota Information
The presence of people, possibly Paleo-Indian, along the west coast of Florida dates back to around 8,000 B.C. and there is evidence that native Americans lived along the waterfront of Sarasota and southwest Florida more than 3,000 years ago. In the 1500's, the first Spanish explorers, Ponce de Leon, Panfilo Narvaez, and Hernando De Soto landed on the Gulf Coast in search of gold and silver. In 1821, the United States acquired the territory of Florida and in 1824, the Armed Occupation Act allowed for private ownership of land along Sarasota Bay, but only for incoming settlers. The native Seminoles were not allowed to become citizens or own land and were pushed even further south. In 1855, the settlers won their war with the Seminoles but it wasn't until the 1880's that development really began.
In 1885, Sarasota was promoted in Scotland. Many families sailed to America expecting fields of vegetables, housing, and citrus groves. They found only a stump-filled Main Street and most of the colonists left. John Hamilton Gillespie, a Scottish aristocrat, lawyer and member of the Royal Company of Archers, Queen's Bodyguard for Scotland, built what is believed to be America's first golf course in Sarasota. Gillespie also built the DeSoto Hotel on Main Street for tourists and prospective investors. In 1902, he was elected as Sarasota's first mayor.
Scottish influence remains evident through the annual Sarasota Highland Games and Festival and the Riverview High Kiltie band, which wears authentic kilts and features bagpipers and Highland dancers. The Crowley Museum and Nature Center in eastern Sarasota vividly demonstrates what life was like for Sarasota's first settlers in the late 19th century.
Sarasota began attracting wealthy Americans in the 1910's as it does today. Bertha Palmer, widow of Chicago developer Potter Palmer, came to Sarasota and built extensive gardens on her waterfront winter estate, Osprey Point, which is today's Historic Spanish Point. Palmer also purchased a 30,000-acre ranch in eastern Sarasota which is now Myakka River State Park.
John Ringling, of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus fame, made a mark on the community of Sarasota in various ways. In the 1920s, he and his wife, Mable, built a magnificent Venetian-style estate on Sarasota Bay named Cą d' Zan. Then they built an art museum for their collection of works by Peter Paul Rubens and other 17th-century Italian and Flemish art. In addition, John used his circus elephants to help build the first bridge from the mainland to St. Armands Key, which he developed as a commercial and residential center. |
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