Our Bonita Springs retro logo carries Florida's alligator and the date "1845" stamped beneath, for the year Florida became the 27th state of the Union. The black-and-white styling is retro, in the vocabulary of crate labels, mid-century beach signage, and the painted wooden roadside placards that once stood along Old 41 between the Liles Hotel and the Wonder Gardens. The alligator and the date do the work of placing the design in the founding generation of the state — and the city that grew up as a U.S. Army survey camp on a quiet southwest-flowing river, was rebranded by Tennessee investors in 1912, and has carried one of Florida's oldest roadside attractions through every decade since 1936.
Today Bonita Springs is, above everything, a coastal Southwest Florida river city: the Imperial River running through Riverside Park and Imperial River Park downtown, the 1926 Liles Hotel and the 1936 Wonder Gardens on Old 41, the Gulf shoreline of Bonita Beach at the western end of Bonita Beach Road, the four-island Lovers Key State Park between Estero Bay and the Gulf, and the Barefoot Beach Preserve dunes south of Wiggins Pass on the Naples side. Our Bonita designs are made for that geography — the city built by surveyors with maps, rebranded by Tennessee investors with new names, and that has carried the Imperial River and Old 41 through every decade since 1912.
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.
