Historical Info on Florida’s Marco Island December 27, 2010 at 3:02 pm
Marco Island is a very unique island in Southwest Florida. It is the largest of Florida’s legendary Ten Thousand Islands chain stretching from Everglades City to Flamingo to the south, the 6800 acre island has a wide variety of historically significant places to keep residents and tourists alike enamored with the community for a lifetime.
Part of the Wilderness Waterway, Marco Island’s varied plant life, animal life, and geography alone is astounding. There are fifty foot high sand hills, forests of pine trees, sandy fields and beaches, and a mangrove swamp. Burrowing owls are one of the main wildlife attracts–in fact, wildlife enthusiasts say that the islet is the only island in the Ten Thousand Islands system of islands to be home to these birds.
The city provides a full range of services for residents, with an excellent school system and utilities infrastructure. Residents can find plenty of things to do on Marco Island, including bike riding, kayaking, jet skiing, fishing, and much more. There are even archaeological findings thousands of years old from Native American tribes, such as the Calusa Indian burial mound and the famous “Marco Cat” found at the Frank Cushing Archaeological Site.
The uniquely habitable island was home to nearly 15,000 residents in the 2000 census, but new census data to be released on December 21, 2010 is expected to show some growth. The real estate boom led to growth from the Naples, Florida metropolitan area, with many beautiful homes commissioned during that period. With the subsequent housing pullback, Marco Island real estate has been found by bargain hunters to be priced very attractively. In fact, Marco Island condos and foreclosures are some of the best priced listings on the market.
Prices on Marco Island homes at the time of this writing range from about $70,000 for a 460 s.f. townhouse to $10,500,000 for a 11,000+ s.f. estate. There are plenty of choices in water front properties, many with private access to the peaceful Gulf waters.