We introduced you to Saunders Stories last week when we shared Michael Saunders’ retelling of the time in 1976 when she decided to start her own real estate brokerage and call it Michael Saunders & Company. (Watch it here.) This week, we go a little further back and share the history of Michael’s family and her youth spent growing up on the northern tip of Longboat Key.
“I am such a fortunate person in that my family, long before Longboat was on the map, my great uncle provided the first reliable transportation from Tampa, Florida south and along the way with his steam boat line (and I say that tongue-in-cheek. It was two steamboats, the Mistletoe and the Miss Sarasota). He did indeed though provide reliable transportation, because in the late 1800’s, it was by boat or by horse. So he brought curiosity seekers, engineers, surveyors, and he fell in love and bought property as he plowed those waters between Tampa and Sarasota and picked a very magical spot on the north end of Longboat Key that he bought for his own cottage.
The Mistletoe
“As a child, I really did go to school in Tampa, but we would leave every Friday and drive to Longboat but we had to go the long way which was going through Sarasota, across the Ringling Bridge, across the Longboat bridge, all the way from the south end of Longboat to the north end of Longboat. My fondest early memories as a child was smelling that salt air as we crossed the Ringling Bridge and then driving down Longboat, which was planted on either side with Australian pines, and it almost created this natural cathedral as you drove down the key. And then we arrived at this magical spot at the very tip end of the key that my mother and father had built with their own hands – this small cottage right over the water.
Land’s End
“And some of my fondest memories were punching a hole in the screen and putting the cane pole out and my father bating it for us to fish because the mosquitoes were fierce so we would stay inside – maybe even in the hammock because we had two wonderful hammocks on the screen porch. I learned to swim there. I learned to stone crab there. I learned how to handle a rod and reel. I was happiest with the pole in my hand, my toes in the water, building sandcastles, collecting shells. It was – what more idyllic life can anyone have? And the amazing thing is that the things that enchanted me as a child are the same reasons that people love Longboat Key today.”
What stories do you want to hear? Let us know in the comments. And if you are interested in learning more about Sarasota real estate, contact a Michael Saunders & Company agent.