Premier Sarasota - Sarasota History

In the Beginning
Archaeologists believe that Sarasota has been occupied for more than ten thousand years by native peoples. For five thousand years while the current sea level existed, fishing in Sarasota Bay yielded large mounds of discarded shells that attest to prehistoric human settlement. The first recorded European contact was in 1513, when a Spanish expedition landed at Charlotte Harbor, just to the south. They were met with suspicion and hostility by the natives.

By the mid-1700s, maps noted the area as Zara Zote, a name attributed by some as indigenous and by others as Spanish in origin. Its sheltered bay and harbor attracted fish and marine traders, and as Florida was exchanged from the Spanish to the English and back, fishing camps, called ranchos, were established along its shores by both Americans and Cubans.

It was 1819 when Florida was acquired as a U.S. Territory; it became a state in 1845. Sarasota has been part of three American counties depending upon the era. Created in 1834 while Florida was still a territory, Hillsborough County was further divided in 1855, placing Sarasota in Manatee County until 1921. At that point, three new counties were carved out of Manatee, one of which was named Sarasota, with the city being made the seat of the new county.

The Pioneers
The area’s first non-native settler is reported to have been Savannah-born William Whitaker, who in the 1840’s traded in food, and later started a ranching industry that survives until today.

It was in 1867 that the Webb family from Utica, New York came to the Sarasota area after first considering Key West. In 1884, tiring of traveling some 20 miles for their mail, John Webb petitioned for a separate postal address for their homestead, Spanish Point. Since federal regulations required the use of only one word for the new address, they chose the name Osprey as their postal address; this community remains until today. As a point of interest, it may be that this federal one-word rule for postal designations is the reason that Zara Zote or Sara Sota became Sarasota.

Another early leader was Joseph Daniel Anderson. A Georgian nicknamed “Jody,” he was a child when his father brought the family to what was then Sara Sota in the 1860’s. As an adult, he pioneered the agriculture business, using only hand tools to produce vegetables, sugar cane and citrus, as well as raising cattle and swine. He also inaugurated the fishing industry, using nets of cotton and flax to catch abundant mullet and other fish. He served as deputy sheriff and game warden, and built Pinedale, the area’s first school, and organized its first church. When Sarasota County was created, he was elected its first commissioner from District 4.

Still a frontier town in the 1880’s, Sarasota was promoted in Scotland by the Florida Mortgage and Investment Company as a land of plenty. Of the many Scots who ventured here, few remained. Among the stalwart Scots was John Hamilton Gillespie, aristocrat, lawyer and member of the Queen’s Bodyguard. It is believed that he built America’s first golf course in Sarasota; the upscale DeSoto Hotel also was his creation. He became Sarasota’s first mayor in 1902.

Among Sarasota’s landmark events was the creation of its newspaper, The Sarasota Times, by Rosa Philips Wilson and her husband C. V. S. Wilson in 1899. Rose Wilson continued publication of the paper alone until 1923 after her husband died in 1910, participating in the leadership of the community through many organizations and providing editorial opinions on most early issues. Under her ownership, the newspaper was named as "the best weekly paper in the state."

In the early 1900’s, Sarasota was emerging as a “paradise for the pampered” as America’s wealthy discovered the area and helped to define it as a center for the arts. Among the most notable of the elite was Bertha Honore Palmer, businesswoman, patron of the arts, international socialite and widow of Chicago multi-millionaire Potter Palmer. Ultimately, she purchased some 90,000 acres in the region, building an estate that is now Historic Spanish Point, and cultivating an interest in agriculture at her Meadowsweet Pastures, now Myakka River State Park. She and her sons, Honore and Potter, later developed their extensive land holdings for citrus and other ventures; among their notable community projects was the creation of Palmer National Bank and Trust Company.

The Circus Town
Yet perhaps more than any other, it was the Ringling family who made a mark on Sarasota’s history. Various members of the family came to Sarasota starting in 1911, and by 1919 the Ringling Brothers Circus had established its winter home here. John and Mable Ringling built their magnificent Venetian-style mansion, named Ca d’Zan, and positioned Sarasota as “Florida’s Cultural Coast” as they built an ever-growing collection of works by Peter Paul Reubens and other 17th century masters. Today, that collection stands as the John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art, one of the country’s best-known such institutions.

A developer as well as a patron of the arts, Ringling was involved in the creation of infrastructure and institutions throughout the area. Among his more memorable projects was the use of his circus elephants to build the first bridge from the mainland to St. Armand’s Key, which he converted to a commercial and residential center.

A New Plan
Following the end of World War I, an economic boom began in Sarasota. The city was flooded with new people seeking jobs, investment, and the chic social milieu that had been created by earlier developers.

In 1927 John Nolan, a professional planner, was hired to develop a plan for the city. He laid out the streets to follow the arch of the bay front with a grid beyond, that extended north to what is now Tenth Street and south to Mound. This followed more closely the way the city was developing at the time.

The names and numbers of the downtown streets were changed to the current ones. He shifted the existing numbered streets to the north, beginning above what now is Main Street. The city hall, situated in the Hover Arcade at the foot of Main Street, was on the waterfront and the city dock extended from it. It was the hub of the new city. Vehicles and materials could pass through the arcade and railroad tracks led directly to the terminus. Broadway, the road that connected the downtown bay front with the northern parts of the city along the bay had become part of the new Tamiami Trail.

The foundation for today’s Sarasota was now in place.