Naples beach in the early 1900s (notice the bath house).

Memories of Florence Haldeman Price - 1963

One of the early houses (1898) at Gordon Pass

on land that is now part of Port Royal

So much has been said about Naples having been a "fishing village" (which it never was.) People visualize boats going up and down the coast with convenient icehouses for their catch of fish and fishermen's homes peeping out from between trees. In 1885 there was no one at Naples: no house, no tent, no Indians. One family, that of Madison Weeks, camped in a palmetto home at Gordon's Past, where Grandfather's sloop landed. I recall the deserted palmetto house was still at the Pass a good part of my childhood, the only thing there. I remember such a house when we went to the Pass on picnics. Madison Weeks, doubtless resentful at the intrusion of visitors, took his family five miles farther south where he lived until he died.

Grandfather knew very well what he was looking for. He did not seek a sporting base although he liked sports, particularly fishing, nor did he need or want an escape from life. His life at home, after recovering from losses of the Civil War, was both sweet and successful. If he or the gentlemen with him expected a quick return from land values, they were soon disillusioned. Grandfather definitely sought a healthy winter home for his family: sunshine, warmth and outdoor living. He wanted it on the mainland, washed by waters of the Gulf. He did not want an island. And that mainland is what he found.

General John S. Williams, of Winchester, Kentucky (better known as General "Cerro Gordo" Williams, because of his success at Cerro Gordo in the Mexican War),Grandfather's sailing companion, and the one always credited with having suggested the search, planned to live in Florida. His Utopia was to have ground on which to grow two good crops of tobacco a year. The gentlemen (one of whom was Champney, a Frenchman, an engineer and the only member of the party to leave a place name behind him) were quick to note advantages of the place where they touched land. Here was the mainland with a good, seven-mile crescent beach lined with pine and cabbage palms coming down to the Gulf. At the pass where they stepped ashore was deep water, a haven in bad weather. It led to a beautiful bay that made of the land a large peninsula. They were glad that when they had stopped at Venice to buy land, the old hermit there refused to sell. His two and one-half miles was the only other piece of mainland they had come upon.

They chose the highest land and the narrowest strip between Gulf and bay for the town they planned. They formed a company and bought the land, charted out streets and laid out building plots. First deeds of purchase are dated December 7, 1886, in the name of the Naples Town Improvement Company. General John S. Williams was president with a board of 10 directors, of which my grandfather was one. The first booklet on Naples, put out by the company in 1888, states that Naples was selected, it might be said "discovered," in the autumn of 1885, and the town was surveyed and plotted during the winter and spring of 1886.

General Williams and my grandfather were the only members of the company who planned to use some of the land purchased. General Williams bought a spot on the beach at the end of what is now 12th Avenue South. My grandfather selected one on the beach about half a mile south of him between the present 18th and 19th Avenues

Sea Villa, one of Naples' earliest houses, was built by Walter Haldeman

South, and they began to build a small, one-story house for the general and a two-story home for my grandfather. Beside each residence was a huge tank for storing rain water, the only water we had for many years. Tows were built for the workmen and the building materials that had to be pulled up on the beach for there was no other way than by waiter to reach the place. Naples might as well have been an island then and for many more years for impenetrable wilderness stretched all around.

By 1887, Naples had two frame houses and a tiny office for the company. There was also a very curious, small, hexagonal building in Naples depicted in an old print. It had been called "The Apiary" but vanished before I was old enough to see it.

General Williams was wiser than my grandfather in choosing where to build. After living in his house down the beach for only one winter, Grandfather built a second home, of three stories next to and south of General Williams. This house eventually was called Sea Villa and is located on the beach at 13th Avenue South. Eventually the third story was removed, and my grandfather gave his first house to a nephew, Socrates Newman, of St. Louis.

During 1888, there was a great deal of building; workmen's shacks and tents made quite a temporary city.

Hunting party leaving the Naples Hotel in 1912

Grandfather's second house was completed as well as the Naples Hotel and the Pier. The hotel opened its doors to guests in January 1889, as the old hotel register testifies. The hotel and pier were, ostensibly, built by The Naples Town Improvement Company (the name was changed on November 14, 1887 to the Naples Company) and possible indebtedness increased from $25,000 to $100,000. Grandfather advanced the money for both and is generally credited with having had them built. The story in the family is that he built the Naples Hotel because Grandmother was lonely.

In January 1890, Walter N. Haldeman became in fact, as well as in spirit, sole owner of the Naples Company. The deed book tells how, at the very first meeting of the Naples Company in the fall of 1889, stockholders had decided to sell out. Advertisements were placed accordingly in newspapers in various localities, the day appointed, January 30, 1890. Bids were presented then on the steps of the Naples Hotel. No one came except Walter N. Haldeman.

Every effort was made to permit others to appear. The steamer Fearless was momentarily expected and it was believed that some persons might be on the steamer who would come, intending to bid on the property. With the approval of the bidder,the sale was postponed until 5 PM the same day. When the steamer came in the sale was resumed but again Walter N. Haldeman was the only bidder. He bought all holdings of the company; the hotel, pier and about 10,000 acres of land plus the steamer, Fearless, for the money the company owed him.

Either then or earlier, a house was built for Grandfather's boat captain, K. M. Large. Captain and Mrs. Large and their daughter, Kitty, who was a splendid shot, lived there, and the Captain made three trips a week on the Fearless to Punta Gorda where the railroad ended. He went up one day and back the next, weather permitting.

In 1890, Naples had four houses on the beach, the Naples Hotel and the Pier. The houses of clean white frame stood stark and bare as new residences generally do, but someone had a delightful fantasy to supply the much-needed color. The shingled roofs of each cottage were gaily painted. One had red and white stripes going up and down; another had stripes running horizontally. Grandfather and Grandmother's cottage had a broad stripe with huge squares of color, and the faint remains are still seen on the roof. If anything made the place, already unique by its isolation, more unusual, it was these roofs Long before airplanes were thought of, they were clearly identified beneath sun and stars.

All this I have been told or have learned since for it can hardly be termed recollection. I first came to Naples on March 14, 1894 with my mother and father and a nurse. I was 14 months old. This, however, was the Naples I first knew. The first things I remember were in such a setting.

Birds eye view - Naples - From the Naples Hotel - 1912

Miss Rose Cleveland, sister of President Grover Cleveland, had bought Grandfather's first house by then, and she was the first to register in the newly opened Naples Hotel. She and her friend, Miss Evelyn Ames, who spent many winters in Naples, arrived at the hotel each evening for dinner in a pony cart. I remember them well.

Captain and Mrs. Large were gone, although I remember them also and their sharp-shooting daughter. A new little house appeared opposite General William's gate to the north, and there was an even smaller house in its yard nearer the Pier. My grandfather's caretaker, Mr. Pixton, an Englishman whom Miss Cleveland first brought to Naples, lived in the house with his wife and son. Captain Charles Stewart, Mr. Pixton's nephew, lived there later with his family.

Mrs. Pixton dispensed the mail from the tiny cubicle in the yard. She was particularly fascinating to children because she'd been bitten by a rattlesnake and lived to tell the tale.

By 1898, General Williams had passed out of the picture. My grandfather now owned his original house and it became Grandfather's guest house with his oldest son and family generally staying in it. The rest of us, my parents and their children and many relatives, stayed with Grandmother and Grandfather and took our meals at the hotel.

I recall that there were no houses or other structures on the Pier, but the hotel owned land on the beach directly north of the Pier and built two commodious bathhouses for hotel guests. One was the ladies, the other for gentlemen. The hotel also had found it necessary to build an overflow guest house nearby on what is now 12th Avenue South (now Palm Cottage, owned by the Collier County Historical Society).

On what is now Broad Avenue South there was a oneroom frame affair we later used for a schoolroom and on Sunday, for church and Sunday school. You had to plow through the deepest, softest sand imaginable to get to it. These additions took place between 1898 and 1902.

What life there was centered absolutely around the hotel. A few native guides took hotel guests hunting or fishing and also hunted for the hotel when game was needed. Guests kept up the supply of fish; no commercial fish were available. I recall a Phillips family, father and son, who guided. There was also "old man Robinson" who gathered oysters for the hotel and, what was as important, opened them. When the hotel closed after "line season," all faded away someplace south, to return the next year. Only Mr. and Mrs. Pixton and their son, Allan, stayed year-round.

A visiting yachtsman Naples' deserted atmosphere just three weeks before the hotel opened for the season on January 27, 1892. He was much puzzled by the whole place and wrote: "A magnificent wharf in such an exposed position, a gorgeous hotel all closed up and no one in or near it; sole inhabitants, a few natives who told some very tall tales about the hunting and fishing."

Miss Annie McLaughlin of Lexington, Kentucky, the surprisingly unsung guardian angel of those early days, ran tint hotel in winter and, in summer the Les Cheneaux Club in Michigan. She made staying at the Naples Hotel a rare anti wonderful experience. With no grocery stores within miles, she utilized every resource to furnish the most delectable food and was never put out when, for days, a storm might stop arrival of ice or other necessities, and she managed to have candy-pulls to cheer us up on those rare rainy days. No wonder guests came from all over the world and many returned time and again.

I can see now the ice, in huge bales of sawdust, being unloaded from the boat at the far end of the Pier. A big hook would dangle down from the crane fastened there to men on an open platform below called the lower pier. With difficulty, due to the boat's rising and lowering by a rolling swell, they would attach the hook to each enormous, bulky load. Then, up and away it would swing, dangling dangerously, to be tossed by the crane over the top Pier's railing onto the small waiting truck. Robert Anderson, Miss Annie's major factotum (and once Grandmother's butler), and a helper would then push the truck on its iron wheels along the wooden rails that led from the Pier's end to the hotel. That was the way all supplies, trunks, baggage and other materials were brought to Naples.

We children used to love to push ourselves on the truck when empty and when permitted to do so. There was a small incline where the Pier joined the land, and we loved to coast. The narrow wooden walk between the truck's rails was the way everyone went from the beach or Pier to the hotel. It was raised an inch or so from the ground, and we dreaded to take one step off of it for we knew snakes might well lodge below. Rattlesnakes were not an uncommon occurrence then.

Bamboo was planted along the boardwalk and I remember a nice, green, leafy camphor tree on the hotel grounds, some kumquat, sour-orange trees and an occasional coconut. The orange and grapefruit groves were back on Rockland Creek, far from salt breezes. It was an all-day excursion to go there by boat.

The only flowers were in Grandfather's front yard. There was a wall around the yard and, within, a flower border. A fragrant Marechal Niel rose trellis grew up the front porch. In back, beyond the stable was a tall wooden fence to protect the vegetable garden and the pinery. The pinery, a rather large planting of pineapples, had wooden slats over and around it as well.

On the beach was a little bathhouse, which we were supposed to use. It had steps and a middle partition: one end for ladies, the other for gentlemen. However, hardly anyone ever dressed there, nor did we choose to use the forbidding, dark, zinc-lined bathtub that stood on four legs in the house. Instead, we went bathing in the Gulf, directly from our rooms into the water regardless of wind, rain or temperature.

The beach was thickly strewn with fascinating things: brightly-colored, perfect shells, both alive and dead. There were inkfish; starfish of every imaginable size; huge, round jellyfish; horseshoe crabs; sting ray eggs; conch egg cases in twisting, snake-like forms and thousands of coquinas digging into the sand. Each day was a new and thrilling experience as our winter treasurehunts unfolded. Thousands of birds and ducks swooped over the waters and as more people came the gulls and terns discovered a new feeding ground.

By day, we splashed about in the Gulf together: old and young, frolicking in the .joyous sunlight. The whole small community lived completely outdoors, and our houses were just for sleeping.

When we returned home to Kentucky after a month or so of this bliss and alter a frightful journey that lasted 10 clays (parents today would never attempt it), Naples became a Never-Never Land of impossible charm. It was so remote, so inaccessible. Did it really exist? Had we ever really been there? Would we ever be able to go again? It was our Paradise.

We could not reach it every season, but when we did, there it was, miraculously enough, for many years exactly as we had left it. The little group of sun-drenched cottages on the graceful, vari-hued beach; the Pier reaching out a welcoming hand, big-crane dangling far out over the water; fish jumping, pelicans diving; food for the gods waiting at the hotel. It was our very own wonderland of endless interest, literally "out of this world." Our hearts swelled with thanksgiving for it.

Mr. and Mrs. Charles Baird Price (Florence Haldeman Price) - 1963

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