Sarasota County Celebrates Centennial With Special Events

SARASOTA COUNTY, FL — A year-long celebration is planned as Sarasota County turns 100 years old in July.

Each month, community partners will host various events celebrating the county’s historic anniversary, said Dr. Frank Cassell, chair of Sarasota County’s centennial steering committee.

Ongoing and upcoming events include a photo exhibit at the Venice Museum & Archives about the county’s creation, an exhibit on the county’s unique architecture at the Center for Architecture, various lectures on the county’s early leaders, concerts and other art events, and trolley tours.

A full list of events can be found online here. The majority of the events will take place in the 100 days leading up to July 1, the date the county was created by state legislature, Cassell added. Partners interested in hosting an event can connect with the committee online here.

Sarasota County Libraries and Historic Resources has also selected a book by Cassell, “Suncoast Empire,” about the life of Bertha Palmer, a wealthy woman who invested in building and growing the county, for its One Book, One Community program. This program encourages the community to read the book and discuss Palmer’s life and influence on the area.

The county got its start as the southern portion of Manatee County and was initially known as the Sarasota District.

“And it was by and large a lightly settled area,” Cassell said. “The land was not good. Much of it was underwater all or part of the year.”

Those who did settle in the area farmed along the ridgelines, which were slightly higher than parts of the land.

By 1910, there were only 900 people living in the city of Sarasota, he said. “Probably only 2,000 in the entire area that we think of as Sarasota County today. It was a frontier community, not much more than a fishing center for relatively wealthy northerners to come down on their yachts.”

Palmer came down to Sarasota from Chicago for the first time in 1910 to find a winter home. A widow, she’d been left a significant amount of money when her husband died. She was a socialite in Chicago, and had also traveled extensively to Chicago with her husband when he was alive and was part of King Edward VII’s social circles, Cassell said.

In Chicago, she’d seen advertisements about land for sale in Sarasota and was intrigued, seeing business opportunities in the area, Cassell said. So, she purchased 140,000 acres.

“She decides to buy this land and then, to make it attractive to settlers and investors, had to remake the land, which was, by and large, wet in one way or another,” he said.

Her “first great experiment” was the town of Bee Ridge, a Palmer family company town, which was located around the area of McIntosh and Proctor roads, Cassell said.

A national advertising campaign for Bee Ridge drew more settlers to the area and Sarasota’s population began to grow. And they weren’t just people living off the land, he said. These were business owners changing the face of the area.

There was one big problem stalling its growth, though, Cassell said. There were no “decent roads.” A rural area, there weren’t any paved roads, though Palmer had built a few roads on her land.

The Model T Ford, which was introduced in 1907, changed the way people traveled.

“It was a revolution. Millions of cars were produced, and they became affordable to people of very limited means,” he said. “They wanted placed to go. They wanted to shop and go to the theater. They wanted to visit neighbors and go to church, wherever. With nothing but dirt roads that were often muddy and impassable or so ruddy they badly ripped up tires and undercarriages of cars, people couldn’t drive in Sarasota.”

Not only did this prevent locals from driving the area, but it also kept the area from “grabbing a slice of the growing tourist trade in Florida,” Cassell said. Additionally, it made it difficult to ship crops to and from other markets by car.

So, the leaders of the Sarasota District, led by Palmer, decided to fight for better roads. This had long been blocked by the county commissioners.

“It became evident that the businessmen of that area were jealous and fearful of the Sarasota District’s growth, particularly the city of Sarasota, and they saw this area as a competitor economically, and thus, tried to prevent its growth, including preventing roads,” Cassell said.

The fight for better roads continued as World War I broke out and as the war ended, there was a growing movement for the Sarasota District to separate from Manatee County.

Palmer, the movement’s biggest supporter, died of breast cancer in 1918, but her family took up the cause. Other business leaders became involved as the rivalry between the district and the Manatee County seat, Braidentown – today Bradenton – continued to spur the movement forward.

There were two major road disputes that brought this rivalry to a head, Cassell said.

The first was Tamiami Trail (U.S. Highway 41) which was proposed in 1915 and completed in 1928. The highway runs 175 miles from Tampa through Bradenton and then south through Sarasota and all the way across the Everglades to Miami, he said.

Braidentown’s leaders initially tried to cut Sarasota out, though, attempting to use their leverage at the state and federal level to change the route of Tamiami Trail so that it went due east at Braidentown and connected with Dixie Highway near the Atlantic Ocean, instead, Cassell said.

“That meant they could tap into markets to the north, and tourist traffic to the east and west would all come through Braidentown,” he said. “Sarasota and the Southwest Coast would essentially be cut off from this major highway.”

Cross State Highway, which today is State Route 70, was another roadway that became a contentious issue between Braidentown and Sarasota.

“The future of this part of Florida had to do with these two roads,” Cassell said. “These are economic development corridors. If you were on them, you had a chance to really make some money and attract people and growth.”

This was an important moment for the Sarasota District. In 1920, a group of business and civic leaders supporting the separation movement met in Sarasota to announce their plans to create a new county and fight for the area’s future.

“They immediately received a great deal of public support and started to organize,” Cassell said.

They traveled throughout the district to share their plan with smaller communities. By the spring of 1921, they garnered enough support so send a bill to the state legislature asking to create Sarasota County. They also negotiated a settlement with the people of Braidentown, Cassell said.

Finally, on July 1, 1921 the state legislature created Sarasota County.

Upcoming and Ongoing Sarasota County Centennial Celebration Events:

Sarasota County Auto Tours

Sarasota County’s Centennial Steering Committee has produced three self-guided auto tours: Fruitville to Miakka Auto Tour, Bee Ridge Auto Tour and Englewood Auto Tour. Download the Sarasota County Auto Tours app for free through the Apple app store or the Google Play store. Audio narration and travel directions will trigger automatically as you drive.

"Designing Sarasota: An Architectural History" Exhibit

This exhibit of Sarasota’s unique architecture, including native Americans, the city’s settlers and early development of Sarasota is on display at the Center for Architecture Sarasota at 265 S. Orange Avenue through May 13.

"Celebrating a Centennial: The Origins of Sarasota County" Exhibit

On display at the Venice Museum, which is located at 351 Nassau Street S. in Venice, this exhibit explores the role Venice played in the creation of Sarasota County. This exhibit is on display through Jan. 12, 2022.

Centennial Concert in the Old Maine Historic District

Bluegrass and Americana band Stumble Creek will perform at the Phillippi Crest Community Clubhouse, which is located at 2421 Burlington Lane in Sarasota, Saturday, March 27, 7 to 9 p.m.

Sarasota Centennial City Tour

An actress portraying Rose Phillips Wilson, Sarasota’s first newspaper publisher, will lead air-conditioned trolley tours through the city to explore its centennial anniversary and the neighborhoods, buildings and people that were pivotal to Sarasota’s historical development. Cost is $34.99 per adult, $18.99 per child. These 90-minute tours are scheduled Wednesday, March 31 and Wednesday, April 14 from 10:30 a.m. to noon.

“Bertha Palmer in Sarasota” Presentation

Dr. Frank A. Cassell, chair of the county’s centennial steering committee and author of “Suncoast Empire,” will speak about Bertha Palmer’s life in Sarasota Wednesday, April 7, 11 a.m., at Heritage Oaks Country Club, 4800 Chase Oaks Drive in Sarasota.