Boca Grande is a small residential community on Gasparilla Island, southwest Florida. Gasparilla Island is a part of both Charlotte and Lee Counties, while the actual village of Boca Grande, home to many seasonal and year-round residents, is entirely in the Lee County portion of the island.
Its name – Spanish for “Big Mouth” – comes from the mouth of the waterway, Boca Grande Pass, at the island’s southern tip. The pass was a busy shipping point for many years, as the waters are naturally deep. Processed phosphate from the Bone Valley region would be loaded onto waiting cargo vessels. The Seaboard Air Line Railway is located at the dock on the island’s southern tip. Shipping business to the island declined when the Port of Tampa was later dredged and phosphate shipping operations moved north to locations along Tampa Bay. Evidence of the island’s industrial past can still be seen.
Space is at a premium in the village of Boca Grande, so many residents use a golf cart as their primary mode of transportation. On any given day in Boca Grande, you will see golf carts and automobiles making their way downtown. A Lee County ordinance designates all but two streets as golf cart paths. Drivers must be 14 to operate a golf cart on these designated streets.
Boca Grande also provided the backdrop for Denzel Washington’s movie, Out of Time, where the quiet village was renamed ‘Banyan Key’ after the banyan trees that populate the island. Scenes for the 2006 film based on Carl Hiaasen’s book Hoot were also filmed on the island, which was again renamed for the filming. This time it became Coconut Cove.
Hurricane Charley hit Boca Grande heavily on August 13, 2004, causing some 20 billion US dollars’ damage to Southwest Florida. The island had no deaths or injuries, but many buildings were damaged, and most of the banyan trees were heavily damaged.
Boca is very popular with affluent holidaymakers, many of whom keep a second home on the island. There is a degree of animosity between year-round residents and those who come to spend the winter months on the island.
The sleepy community sometimes hosts Former Governor Jeb Bush and President George W. Bush’s family members, who occasionally spend the week between Christmas and New Year’s on the island. Marvin P. Bush owns a house on Lee and 4th.

Boca Grande Pass is world famous for Tarpon Fishing in May & June. The Profession Tarpon Tournament Series is held annually and aired on the Sunshine Network. Captain Jimmy Burnsed has been involved in these tournaments from the start.

Hammerhead Sharks
Hammerhead sharks are common in Boca Grande Pass. A Port Charlotte, Florida, man named Bucky Dennis caught a new world record 1,280-pound hammerhead shark on May 23, 2006, in Boca Grande, Florida. Mr. Dennis was alone on his boat when the 12-and-a-half-foot animal took the bait — a 25-pound slongray. A friend on a nearby vessel climbed aboard Mr. Dennis’ ship to help. The five-foot-nine, 180-pound man also used shoulder harnesses. Mr. Dennis says they finally got the shark on the boat after about five hours [1]. The female was pregnant with a record litter of 55 unborn pups. Her reproductive tract alone weighed nearly 250 pounds [2].
Boca Grande History

History
Gasparilla Island’s first inhabitants were the Calusa Indians. They lived on Useppa Island by 5,000 B.C. and on Gasparilla Island by 800 or 900 A.D. Charlotte Harbor was the center of the Calusa Empire, which numbered thousands of people and hundreds of fishing villages. The Calusa were a hunting and fishing people who perfected the art of maritime living in harmony with the environment. They were a politically powerful, dominating Southwest Florida during their “golden age.” Since the Calusa had no written language, the only record of their lifestyle and ceremonies comes from the (much later) Seminoles’ oral history, from Spanish explorers’ written accounts, and from the archaeological record. The first contact the Calusa had with the white man came during Spanish explorations at the beginning of the 16th century. By the mid-1700s, the Calusa had all but disappeared, the victims of European diseases, slavery, and warfare.
Like the Indians, the earliest settlers came to Gasparilla Island to fish. By the late 1870s, several fish ranches operated in the Charlotte Harbor area. One would later be at the north end of Gasparilla Island in the small village called Gasparilla. The fishermen, many Spanish or Cuban, caught huge catches of mullet and other fish and salted them down for shipment to Havana and other markets. In the 1940s, the Gasparilla Fishery was moved to Placida across the bay, where it still stands today, and the fishing village died out. Today, many of Boca Grande’s early fishing families are still represented in third, fourth, fifth, and even sixth-generation descendants who pursue many different vocations, including fishing.
In 18,85, phosphate rock was discovered on the banks of the Peace River just above Punta Gorda, east of Gasparilla Island across Charlotte Harbor. This discovery would turn the south end of Gasparilla Island into a major deep-water port (Boca Grande Pass is one of the deepest natural inlets in Florida) and become responsible for the development of Boca Grande. Wealthy American and British athletes began discovering the Charlotte Harbor area for its fantastic fishing (notably for the world-class game fish tarpon) and hunting. These two discoveries – phosphate rock and fishing – would put Boca Grande “on the map.”
Phosphate was a valuable mineral for fertilizers and many other products, and was in great demand worldwide. At first, the phosphate was barged down the Peace River to Port Boca Grande, where it was loaded onto schooners for worldwide shipment. But by 190,5, it was felt that building a railroad to Port Boca Grande and carrying the phosphate to it by rail should improve the method of shipment.
In 19,05, Ogrico subsidiary Peace River Mining Company, officials along with engineers from the United States Army Corps of Engineers and 60 laborers, landed on Gasparilla Island, and surveying and construction of the railroad began. The only buildings on the island at this time were the lighthouse and the assistant keeper’s house at the extreme southern tip of the island. The railroad terminus with its 1,000-foot-long pier would be built nearby. The Charlotte Harbor and Northern Railroad was completed in 1907. For 50 years, phosphate would be shipped out of the state-of-the-art port virtually without disruption. Phosphate-laden trains were offloaded directly onto ocean-going freighters, and the ships took the valuable commodity to ports worldwide. In 1969, Port Boca Grande ranked as the fourth busiest port in Florida.
In the 1970s, phosphate companies increasingly switched their interest to ports in Hillsborough and Manatee Counties. As more money was put into developing these ports, traffic into Port Boca Grande began to dwindle, and in 19,79 the line was abandoned and the phosphate industry in Boca Grande ended. Florida Power and Light Company also used the port as an oil storage terminal. This use ceased in 2001. The oil storage tanks were removed from the nine-acre site at the southern tip of Gasparilla Island, adjacent to the century-old Boca Grande lighthouse. Island residents have begun an effort to have the property preserved as part of the island’s state park system.
The Charlotte Harbor and Northern Railroad brought phosphate and supplies to Gasparilla Island and wealthy people from the north. By 1910, Boca Grande Pass was already famous for its unequaled tarpon fishing among fishermen, who stayed on nearby Useppa Island. The Agrico Company began to develop the village of Boca Grande, having begun to see the potential of the idea of developing Gasparilla Island beyond the port.
In what would become downtown, the railroad station was built; roads, sidewalks, streetlights, shops, a post office, and water and telephone service were not far behind. The town was landscaped, including the now famous section of Second Street called Banyan Street. The railroad company built several cottages downtown, and a few wealthy families from “up north” purchased land and built winter residences. The train stopped at Gasparilla, the fishing village at the island’s north end, at the railroad depot in downtown Boca Grande, and at the south end phosphate terminal.
In 1929, the Boca Grande Hotel was built just south of downtown Boca Grande. It was a three-story, brick resort hotel where most of the island weathered the hurricane of 1944. The Boca Grande Hotel changed hands and was demolished in 1975. It took six months to raze the building using fire and the wrecking ball, as it had been built to withstand fire and significant storms.
The railroad continued to bring the grand visitors from all along the eastern seaboard until the Boca Grande Causeway opened in 1958. The depot was restored in the 1970s, and several shops, offices, and restaurants now occupy the old building. The railroad continued to work trains to the south end until the phosphate port closed in 1979. Thanks to the generosity of Bayard and Hugh Sharp (members of the Du Pont family who had been winter residents for many years), the community purchased the old railroad bed from CSX Corp. (the successor corporation to the old Chessie System). It transformed it into a new use, Boca Grande’s popular Bike Path. Boca Grande has become a unique community, with many wealthy winter residents rubbing elbows with fishermen, railroad, and port workers who formed the permanent, year-round working population.