Venice

They were quickly followed by three of the Roberts children, for whom the Bay was eventually named, although Richard Roberts favored the area south of the bay, while Mitch and James would settle in what would later be called Nokomis.

For the next several years, many families would relocate to the area, looking for new opportunities or a brand new start. They slowly spread out across both sides of the Bay.

By 1883, the area was getting a little bit of a reputation, and Frank Higel, a chemist and inventor, came to the area and bought several acres of land from Richard Roberts to launch his new venture. When Higels’ primary investor dropped out, he changed gears and planted hundreds of citrus trees, establishing the area’s first Orange Groves, and helped institute the first post office, in present-day Nokomis.

Believing the area to have a similar look and feel of Venice, Italy, Higel suggested adopting that name for the post office and the town. However the approaching railroad and a deep-pocketed philanthropist were about to change all that.

In 1903, the Seaboard Air Line Railway finished the latest extension of their tracks into Sarasota. Chicago philanthropist, Bertha Honoré Palmer had watched how the railroad helped her husband build his business, as she worked with him behind the scenes. And shortly after his death, she saw the potential of Sarasota area for both a retirement home and a worthy investment.

In 1910, she finalized the purchase of 140,000 acres, south of Roberts Bay, along with negotiating with Seaboard to extend their tracks to her new locale – which she decided to name Venice.

Obscure rules about post office and train station nomenclature led to a 6-year long mostly civil battle between the two bay communities, ending with Palmer’s area retaining the name Venice, while Higel and descendants of the Knight and Blackburn families settled on the name Nokomis.

Unfortunately, the United States entered the War to End All Wars in 1917, which cut the workforce, and Mrs. Palmer died about a year later, her dream of Venice realized in name only.

A land boom in the 1920’s revitalized interest in the Sarasota area at large, and both Venice and Nokomis saw growth. Dr. Fred Albee, an orthopedic surgeon who pioneered bone grafts and had sunk considerable funds into the first luxury hotel in Nokomis, turned his attention across the bay and purchased a large piece of Mrs. Palmer’s land. He hired a famous architect and city planner, John Nolen, to plat out his new city.

Before they could get too deep into the work, however, Albee was given an offer he found too good to pass up to sell the nearly 3000 acres to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, who wanted to build a railroad retirement community. They retained Nolen as their planner, but restricted him from some of his more ambitious ideas.

In 1926, the first road, Nassau Street, opened to traffic, the Venice Hotel started accepting guests and the first residential housing began to be built. With the tallying of some annexed property, within a year, the population had grown to the point that the town of Venice officially became a city.

Unfortunately, when the stock market crashed, so did the plans of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. The population plummeted from 3000 to barely more than 300. Instead of a Railroad retirement town, Venice took on a different vision.

Scouts from the Kentucky Military Institute, searching for a new winter campus happened across the near empty city in 1932. The influx of school personnel, cadets and their families breathed new life into the town, and KMI would be an important part of Venice until 1970, when it closed due to growing anti-war sentiment during VietNam.

In May of 1942, more military personnel flooded the town with the establishment of the Venice Army Air Base. Groups of pilots would train in Venice before shifting to either McDill Field in Tampa or Page Field in Fort Myers, to complete their combat training during World War II. More than 20,000 men, including the B-25 pilots who flew bombing raids on Tokyo and their leader Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle, as well as the Tuskegee Airmen all trained in Venice at some point during the war. The field became the Venice Municipal Airport in 1947.

By now, Venice was holding its own, as well as attracting thousands of snowbirds and vacationers who heard about the area from former military and visitors. And in 1960, another group decided to make Venice their winter home.

In 1959, John Ringling North, the heir to the Ringling holdings, sold their property in Sarasota. But thanks to the easy accessibility of the railroad and the year round good weather, the trains of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circuses, rolled to a stop in Venice and the circus performers and animals paraded through the city to their winter quarters. The tradition would continue every year for decades, and often retired circus folk would settle in the area. In 1992, the trains stopped running to Venice and the circus would relocate to track spurs in remote areas of Sarasota & Charlotte Counties before closing for good in 2017.

Today, Venice values it’s history. The old Triangle Inn hosts the Venice Museum and Archives. The original Venice Train Depot has been restored, and much of the old tracks have been repurposed as The Legacy Trail. The Lord-Higel House has been restored and hosts a museum of the early days of Venice. Around 18,000 people live in the city year round, including descendants of nearly every historical figure mentioned above.

The military and circus industries have been replaced by Tervis Tumblers’ main manufacturing hub, and Higel’s is still a great place to get any and all citrus goods. Considered by many as the “Shark’s Tooth Capital of the World, “Venice also hosts the Shark’s Tooth Festival every year. The Venice Theatre, founded in 1950, is housed inside the old KMI building, is the second largest community theatre in the United States.