Founding Naples: the pier, the Trail and Barron Collier, the back story

About Founding Naples: the pier, the Trail and Barron Collier, the back story

By the ULTIMATE Naples Editorial Team

Naples was founded in the late 1880s as a winter resort, named by promoters who admired its bay. For decades it could only be reached by boat; the railroad and the Tamiami Trail changed everything in the late 1920s.

The founders

In the 1880s a group led by Walter N. Haldeman, publisher of the Louisville Courier-Journal, and the Kentucky senator John Stuart Williams bought land on the Gulf and laid out a winter resort. In 1888 they built a pier, where steamers landed visitors and supplies, and a hotel followed.

Barron Collier and the Trail

In the 1920s the advertising magnate Barron Collier bought vast tracts of Southwest Florida; Collier County, created in 1923, bears his name. He helped finance the Tamiami Trail, the road across the Everglades between Tampa and Miami, completed in 1928, and the railroad reached Naples around the same time.

For its first forty years, the way into Naples was down the pier.

Storms and growth

Hurricane Donna struck in 1960, and soon after the county seat moved from Everglades City to Naples. Air conditioning, the interstate and golf did the rest: from a small fishing and resort town, Naples became one of the most sought-after addresses in Florida.

Our advice: walk out on the pier at sunset and imagine arriving by steamer, then stroll the quiet streets of Old Naples, where some of the early cottages survive.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Founding Naples: the pier, the Trail and Barron Collier, the back story before you go.