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Longboat Key, Florida

Longboat Key And The Resort At Long Boat Key Club

Norman
2004-08-11 16:23:22

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Located on a barrier island just off the coast of Sarasota in the Gulf of Mexico is paradise personified, Longboat Key. This private island is only 7 miles from the Sarasota/Bradenton airport and a 2-hour drive from Orlando. Eleven miles of sandy white beachfront, overlooking the blue-green waters of the Gulf of Mexico, provides the ideal location rekindling those dormant love passions.
With a population of only 8,000 permanent residents, and the absence of t-shops, noisy traffic, mini-malls, fast food outlets, neon signs and everything else that is horrendous in many beachfront communities, Longboat Key well deserves its renowned reputation as an ideal get-away for families and couples.

The first inhabitants of Long Boat Key are believed to be the Timucan and Caloosa tribes. In 1539, the Spanish explorer Hernando DeSoto landed in the area with his men in their longboats; more dramatically, however, Jean Lafitte from New Orleans, who was called the gentleman pirate, used this area in the 1800's.

In the early 1920's, John Ringling of circus fame purchased considerable acreage on the south end of the island. Ringling constructed a golf course and planted Australian pine trees along Gulf of Mexico Drive. He also began construction of a luxurious hotel, the Ritz-Carlton Hotel on New Pass, which he eventually abandoned, and invested, instead, in the John and Mabel Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota.

Thanks to the Arvida Company the development of the island, and its transformation into a first class resort destination, was initiated in 1956.

Accommodations may be plentiful in Longboat Key; however, there are very few that can boast having a AAA Four-Diamond rating that eloquently captures the beauty and spirit of this corner of the globe. The Resort at Longboat Key Club rightfully merits their superstar classification, when you consider its dramatic ...