John McCarthy, interim executive director of Community Services for Sarasota County, summarized local history for the Historical Society of Sarasota County’s annual cruise aboard Le Barge:

“First came the native Indians, who lived off seafood for thousands of years.
“Then came the Spanish, whose diseases wiped out the Indians.
“Then came the English, who drew the best maps and surveys of Florida.
“Then came the new Indians, the Seminoles from Georgia and Alabama.
“Then came the homesteaders, who pushed the new Indians out.
“Then came the War Between the States, and the cow hunters who discovered the Myakka River.
“Then came the hardy settlers from the North and the South after the war, founding towns like Bee Ridge and Fruitville. One of the first towns in the area was Myakka, at the end of Fruitville Road.
“Then came the colonists from Scotland in December 1885. They expected to find a modern city; instead they found a primitive town. But they and the company that brought them here platted downtown Sarasota and built the first dock at Main Street and a big hotel, and got Sarasota started.
“Then came the dredged channels and the steamboats in the 1890s and the first railroad.
“Then came a real railroad, the Seaboard Air Line, in 1903.
“Then came a weekly newspaper and a telephone in the 1890s, an ice plant, and the first automobile, in 1909.
“Then came Mrs. Potter Palmer and John Ringling, and people started talking about Sarasota all over the country.
“Then came the Tamiami Trail, to connect Tampa and Miami.
“Then came the City of Sarasota, which was chartered in 1913.
“Then came the boom of the 1920s, when real estate values soared.
“Then came the big hurricane of 1926 and the real estate crash, and the values declined. But in Sarasota, the depression was not as bad as it was elsewhere because people could grow vegetables and fruit in their yards, and there was plenty of cattle. “And everyone could fish; the Ringling Causeway at the time became more of a fishing pier than a bridge.”
“Then came the WPA projects in the 1930s, such as the Lido Casino and the Municipal Auditorium.
“Then came World War II and the Army air bases in Sarasota and Venice; after the war, many servicemen based there decided to settle here.
“Then came another big boom in the 1950s, with subdivisions such as South Gate and Kensington Park, and shopping centers, such as Ringling and South Gate.”
The rest, as they say, is history.