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The Calusa fished, gathered shellfish, and built shell mounds along the Imperial River and Estero Bay coast for thousands of years before European contact; the great shell-mound capital at Mound Key, just north of Bonita in Estero Bay, still rises more than thirty feet above the water. The Spanish arrived in 1513 with Juan Ponce de León and made their first serious attempt to establish a foothold at Mound Key in 1567; the British took Florida in 1763 and gave it back in 1783; the United States annexed the territory in 1821; and Florida became the 27th state on March 3, 1845. U.S. Army surveyors first crossed the area during the Third Seminole War in the 1850s, and a second crew came through in the 1870s and pitched their long camp along what they called Surveyor's Creek — the camp that gave Survey its name, and the river the name it carried until 1912.

Bonita Springs was a survey camp on the Imperial River before it had any name at all. The Calusa people lived along the Imperial River and Estero Bay for thousands of years before European contact. The Spanish came in 1513 with Juan Ponce de León, the British took Florida in 1763 and gave it back in 1783, the United States annexed it in 1821, and Florida became the 27th state on March 3, 1845. In the 1870s, a crew of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers surveyors pitched their tents along a slow southwest-flowing waterway and went to work mapping the coast; after they left, the homesteaders who came after them called the site Survey and the river Surveyor's Creek, and the names held for forty years. In the late 1880s an Alabama cotton planter named Braxton Bragg Comer — later Governor of Alabama — bought 6,000 acres around Survey to grow pineapples, bananas, coconuts, and citrus, and held on until the freezes of 1893 and 1894 killed his stock plants and sent him back to Alabama. Other small growers stayed and put in citrus, tomatoes, and tropical fruit along Surveyors Creek. In 1912, a Tennessee investor named J.H. Ragsdale, partnered with Dan Farnsworth of Fort Myers, platted the small town with streets and avenues; they rebranded the place as Bonita Springs and renamed the waterway the Imperial River, and the new names stuck. The road from Bonita Springs to Fort Myers opened in 1917, the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad's Fort Myers Southern Branch reached town in the 1920s, the Liles Hotel opened its doors at the river in 1926, and the Tamiami Trail was finished through town in 1928 — a four-step infrastructure build that turned the village into a roadside-attraction stop on the Tampa-to-Miami line. On February 22, 1936, two brothers named Bill and Lester Piper opened the Everglades Reptile Gardens, later renamed the Wonder Gardens, on Old 41 at the Imperial River crossing — one of the oldest continuously operating roadside attractions in Florida. Hurricane Donna hit Southwest Florida on September 10, 1960, and Hurricane Ian came ashore on September 28, 2022 — the two defining storms of the modern Bonita era, and the city rebuilt after both. Florida acquired the Lovers Key barrier islands as a state park in 1983, saving them from luxury condominiums. The City of Bonita Springs was designated a Preserve America Community in 2012. On the Imperial River since the Calusa.

Why People Visit Bonita Springs Florida

Bonita Springs offers the Imperial River corridor through downtown, the 1926 Liles Hotel and 1936 Wonder Gardens on Old 41, the public Gulf shoreline of Bonita Beach Park, the four-island Lovers Key State Park preserved by Florida in 1983, the Collier County dunes of Barefoot Beach Preserve north of Wiggins Pass, the Calusa shell-mound capital at Mound Key in Estero Bay, and the Tamiami Trail roadside-Florida lineage that runs from Tampa through Bonita to Miami. It is a Southwest Florida coastal river city built by U.S. Army surveyors, rebranded by Tennessee investors in 1912, and rebuilt twice in the modern era after Donna and Ian. On the Paradise Coast since 1912.