The Boca Grande Historic Preservation Board will meet at 10 a.m. on September 11, 2024, to consider four items, including solar panels in the historic district.
Cases include SCA2024-00005, a f…
BY KIM KYLE
From 1893 to 1908 there was a school located on 4th Street in a frame building. The building may have also been used as a church. The first school on Gasparilla at the north end of …
To the Editor:
I very much enjoyed the article by Karen Grace on Brian Ahern, and with it brought back many memories to mind. Attached is the cover of a sweetly inscribed book given to El…
BY KAREN GRACE
Famous stars have been coming to Gasparilla Island for years, from Lana Turner to Robert Redford, Harrison Ford and Michael Keaton. The most famous was Katherine Hepburn, a rela…
Though it’s only just the beginning of August, here at the Beacon office we are looking toward our November/December edition of the Gasparilla Magazine. Do you have any special memories of Christm…
BY JAMES BLAHA, BOCA GRANDE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
On February 10, 1930, the following article appeared in the Fort Myers News-Press: “Plans for a three-story resort hotel at Boca Grande to cost ap…
Three projects, including a renovation and expansion of the Boca Grande Community Center, were each unanimously approved by the Boca Grande Historic Preservation Board on July 10.
In spite of t…
Somewhere in the intense mid- ‘80s, I took videographer Gary Sullivan tarpon fishing. It was 1985 when I met Gary, aka Sully, when he came along on a trip. He was in the production business and, a…
BY KRISTEN VARELA-SCHILD
At my father’s memorial, I was a little jealous. Jealous of the stories my brother told of connecting with my father nearly every weekend at their hunting lodge; sittin…
BY THE BOCA GRANDE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
The late Robert Fischer, author of “Boca Grande: Once A Railroad Town,” wrote that there are “Many beautiful places to live or vacation in southwest Florid…
