Author: David Futch
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 146715170X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1
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Book Description
Hop aboard the Charlotte Harbor and Northern Railway for a trip across the trestle to Gasparilla Island. Natural beauty and the sportfishing life brought the Cabots, Vanderbilts and Du Ponts to this island paradise, where local fishing families danced, ate and drank with the rich and famous at their castles on the beach. As the wealthy played, they relied on locals for everything from fishing charters to literally laundering and ironing their money. These are tales of 1920s rum smugglers whose offspring smuggled marijuana in the 1970s, a woman who caught 236 tarpon in one season and a bar owner whose Pink Elephant restaurant fed American presidents. James Bond's Goldfinger even has a part as an island player. From Placida to Boca Grande Pass to Cabbage Key, fourth-generation Gasparilla Islander David Futch offers a wild ride with Bull Bay hermits and billionaires.
Author: Marilyn Arbor Hoeckel
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 9780738506135
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 132
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Book Description
Life on Gasparilla Island once had a very different rhythm. With a past intimately tied to Charlotte Harbor and the rich fishing grounds it provided, Gasparilla Island was, in its early history, the site of a small fishing village and a commercial fishery. The discovery of phosphate deposits in the region and the introduction of the railroad soon increased the pace of life, and a thriving port was built on the island's south end. As the twentieth century dawned and the Florida boom loomed on the horizon, the town of Boca Grande began to hum with the activity of a rapidly growing population. Though much has changed through the years--the little fishing village has vanished, the estimable Boca Grande Hotel is gone, and the once bustling port is now a state park--much of the region's unique history continues to inform the modern landscape. The venerable lighthouse, constructed in 1890, now serves as a museum of local history, and the grand Gasparilla Inn still stands firmly upon its original 1911 site. Those who now call Boca Grande home cherish it for the same island magic that fishermen and railroad officials recognized long ago: its unspoiled natural beauty, inviting climate, world-class fishing, and welcoming community.
Author: Charles E. Blanchard
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780979572302
Category : Boca Grande (Fla.)
Languages : en
Pages : 275
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Book Description
Author: Lisa Ballard
Publisher: Richter Publishing LLC
ISBN: 9781945812675
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 54
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The legend behind the Gasparilla Pirate Festival in Tampa Bay Jos Gaspar never intends to become a pirate, but after being falsely accused of stealing the crown jewels, it becomes his fate while trying to escape on a ship bound from Spain to Florida. After saving his best friend and freeing the crew from the ship's evil captain, he defeats the infamous Pierre LaFitte then claims the west coast of Florida as his pirate domain... until the Americans find him.
Author: The Junior League of Tampa
Publisher: Ravenio Books
ISBN:
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 567
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Book Description
Where the spine of Florida, the Ridge District, begins its gentle slope westward to the Gulf of Mexico there lies a town at the head of a beautiful bay, unlike any other town in Florida. This is Tampa, named by the Caloosa Indians long before the advent of the Spanish Conquistadors. This is Tampa which has been occupied in turn by Spanish treasure seekers, missionaries, pirates, U. S. troops garrisoned here during the Seminole Indian Wars, a French Count who was the head surgeon of Napoleon’s Navy, pioneers from southern states, pioneers from northern states, Union troops, Confederate troops, Cuban cigar makers from Key West, troops in the Spanish-American War, Tin Can tourists, wealthy tourists, real estate speculators, Air Corps personnel in World War II, and last of all an influx of permanent residents who have made this the fastest growing area in Florida. Tampa is the hub of the region industrially, but more important for our purposes it’s the hub of good food. Great cattle enterprises lie to the south and east, 22 miles down the coast of Tampa Bay is the farming community of Ruskin known as the salad bowl of the nation, across the bay to the west are the Gulf Beaches where seafood is king, all the area is citrus country at any point of the compass, and 28 miles northwest there is a Greek community called Tarpon Springs where the customs, the language, and the recipes are straight from the isles of the Aegean. The natives of this little town came to Tarpon Springs many years ago from Greece to harvest the sponges which are found in the Gulf of Mexico. Curio shops line the docks on the Anclote River where the sponge fleet ties up, but the Greek food affords the visitor’s greatest enjoyment. In a dining room and lounge decorated with Grecian war masks, maps of the world as Homer knew it, models of ancient Greek warships, and the hull of a primitive sponge boat, one may feast on Greek salad which is fashioned as carefully as a mosaic and just as beautiful to behold. This alone would be worth the trip, but you may also have lamb prepared in strange and delicious ways, scarlet stone crab claws, the meat of which is too delicate to describe, or your choice of seafood, followed by honey-and-almond confections. Tampans can and do find a wonderful meal in any direction. All the good restaurants serve succulent steaks, there are several fine Chinese restaurants, there is even a good French restaurant west across Tampa Bay. The notion that all Florida is palm trees, sand, and bathing beauties is false. So is the idea of Florida as a vast interior of sleepy cracker towns with pigs and chickens running the roads, or a steady diet of greasy fried chicken with blackened string beans. Florida is sun and sand, yes, but it is also cool lakes, ancient oaks, and lacy cypress trees, big cities, beautiful farms, and citrus groves covering rolling hills like tufted bedspreads. Florida is lush ranchland, crystal springs, dogwood and maple trees, people from everywhere and all walks of life who came to see, got sand in their shoes, and had to return. Tampa is a composite of all of it. It’s a bountiful land. We wish all could see for themselves. But if that is impossible, then we in our small way, will try to bring it to you. The food of a land tells the life of its people, and we would like to share our good life with everyone. Here is our offering. May it bring you pleasure as we have known it.
Author: Lloyd Arthur Wiggins
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1483608212
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 222
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Book Description
This is a story of a small island off the southwest coast of Florida, on the shores of Gasparilla Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, with its varied plant life among numerous types of land and sea birds. The other residents are local Florida crackers, snowbirds from the North, and holidaymakers looking for sanctuary from the hustle and bustle of modernday living. The lucky ones who set foot on this boat-only-access island will have a sense of tranquility and well-being that is the result of being totally free from modern-day encumbrances and surrounded by the sounds of nature. The main characters are Nikki, Lloyd, and George and how they found a contingent of new friends on a small spit of land called Little Gasparilla Island, fondly referred to as LGI Prologue This islands namesake is Juan Gomez Gasparillaor, as hes known today throughout the west coast of Florida, Jose Gaspar. Some think of Gaspar as folklore, while others say he is just a myth. A few locals have stories handed down by ancestors through the ages and say the proof is probably in the United States naval archives, since the pirates were hunted down by the USS Enterprise in the early 1800s. They all were either killed or put on trial in New Orleans and subsequently hung, all except for Jose Gaspar. He was alleged to be sixty-five years old and on his last campaign before dividing up the spoils among his cohorts. Rather than get caught, he wrapped himself in the anchors chain and rope then jumped into the dark blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico to end his life; that was his only way to escape the hangmans noose. It is believed that Gaspar and his band of thieves and murderers had their haven around Charlotte Harbor. The barrier islands, such as Gasparilla and Little Gasparilla, would have been excellent cover where they could evade and lie in wait behind tall sand dunes or mangroves, searching the Gulf waters for European vessels sailing within sight, carrying gold, silver, and jewels collected from the Americas to take back to their kings and queens or other financiers. Rumor has it that the pirates would slaughter everyone on board the captured ships except for the attractive ladies, who would become concubines of Jose Gaspar. He was a noted womanizer when he was assigned to the court of Charles III as a naval attach at the age of twenty-seven. He jilted the daughter-in-law of the king for another woman of the court and was about to be arrested on trumped-up charges of treason when he commandeered a Spanish ship, called the Florida Blanca, and set sail with a hastily assembled volunteer crew for the Florida straits. Little Gasparilla had two passes barely navigable for a sailing ship, but not for a man-of-war ship. The much larger pass into Gasparilla Sound was on the south end of Big Gasparilla through the Boca Grande Pass, with its two rivers emptying into the Gulf, flowing through Charlotte Harbor. This proved to be ideal for the crew to hide and pounce on unsuspecting heavily laden sailing ships heading north. Legend has the number of conquered vessels by Gaspar to be over four hundred. Back then, the amount of the bounty was reported to be in excess of thirty million Yankee dollars. Todays count would be in the billions, which would take scores of stolen chests to accommodate the spoils. No treasure of his to this day has ever been found. I have visited Little Gasparilla most winters for several months during the last seventeen years. On my many walks toward the state park on the north end of the island, I always look wishfully for doubloons washing ashore or a treasure chest sticking out of a tall sand dune while looking for sharks teeth. Besides the tangible treasures that may bein ones wildest dreams, could befound, there are other riches to discover while walking on the sand, be it purely spiritual or just a perfect seashell lying on the shore of Little Gasparilla Island, brought in by the gentle waves.
Author: Betty Barndollar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Boca Grande (Fla.)
Languages : en
Pages : 22
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Book Description
"This is the story of Boca Grande and Gasparilla Island. It's not a history, as history involves documented facts, which are in short supply in regard to Boca Grande. Most of this story depends on the memories of people who have either told their stories to me or to someone who interviewed them for one of the two newspapers which have operated at various times on the island. I've done as much research as possible and all dates and facts are as accurate as I could find." -- pg. 1.
Author: Wilson Hawthorne
Publisher: The Last Pirate, W Hawthorne
ISBN: 9780615282824
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Author: James F. Kaserman
Publisher: Author House
ISBN: 1452042217
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 350
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Book Description
In Gasparilla Pirate Genius, the times are rough, the murders are graphic and savage; sex can be raw, revenge is vicious, and treatment of women, gentle or crude. Kaserman introduces us to the wisdom of this legendary pirate, ideas that may help civilization in the millennium. This is a story of POWER, ROMANCE, and TRAGEDY. "Best Florida Book" --- 2001 Florida Publisher's Association President's Award "An informative mixture of history and mythology that delves into Florida's romantic past." ----Gene Landrum, Ph.D., author and lecturer
Author: Jack E. Davis
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 0871408678
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 448
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Book Description
Winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for History Winner of the 2017 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction A National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Finalist A New York Times Notable Book of 2017 One of the Washington Post's Best Books of the Year In this “cri de coeur about the Gulf’s environmental ruin” (New York Times), “Davis has written a beautiful homage to a neglected sea” (front page, New York Times Book Review). Hailed as a “nonfiction epic . . . in the tradition of Jared Diamond’s best-seller Collapse, and Simon Winchester’s Atlantic” (Dallas Morning News), Jack E. Davis’s The Gulf is “by turns informative, lyrical, inspiring and chilling for anyone who cares about the future of ‘America’s Sea’ ” (Wall Street Journal). Illuminating America’s political and economic relationship with the environment from the age of the conquistadors to the present, Davis demonstrates how the Gulf’s fruitful ecosystems and exceptional beauty empowered a growing nation. Filled with vivid, untold stories from the sportfish that launched Gulfside vacationing to Hollywood’s role in the country’s first offshore oil wells, this “vast and welltold story shows how we made the Gulf . . . [into] a ‘national sacrifice zone’ ” (Bill McKibben). The first and only study of its kind, The Gulf offers “a unique and illuminating history of the American Southern coast and sea as it should be written” (Edward O. Wilson).
