Naples, Florida is a premier senior vacation destination and retirement community.

Naples FL History

The Caloosa Indians first inhabited the Naples area. In the late 1860's, Roger Gordon and Joe Wiggins, arrived to settle in the area. Throughout the 1870's and 1880's, magazine and newspaper stories likened the area to the sunny Italian peninsula. The name “Naples” is the result of promoters who described the bay as "surpassing the bay in Naples, Italy."

In 1887, a group of wealthy investors from Kentucky purchased virtually the entire town of Naples. Naples quickly gained a reputation as a winter resort. Celebrities such as Rose Cleveland, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, Greta Garbo, Hedy Lamarr, and Gary Cooper vacationed there. As the population of the town went up, so did the price of property. The cost of a beachfront lot soon reached $125.

In 1911, Barron Collier, who had made his fortune in streetcar advertising, visited nearby Useppa Island. He bought over a million acres of untouched swampland, including most of Naples. Collier spent more than $1 million of his own money to construct the Tamiami Trail, which opened in 1926 as the only paved highway linking the state's two largest cities at that time, Tampa and Miami.

Naples Florida – Vacation, Retirement & Leisure Destination

Naples, Florida continues to thrive and, along with the rest of Southwest Florida, maintains its reputation as one of the state’s premiere vacation, retirement, and leisure destinations.