What the brochures promised, the island delivered: a six-mile crescent of sugar-white sand, among the widest beaches in Florida, with shelling good enough to draw collectors from around the world. Marco is the largest of the Ten Thousand Islands — the maze of mangrove keys where the Gulf meets the Everglades — and the gateway to all of it: boat trips out through the islands, dolphins and roseate spoonbills, and the warm, shallow, almost-waveless water that makes the place feel like a long, lazy float.
When Ponce de León’s Spanish reached this coast in the early 1500s, they named the island La Isla de San Marco and met the Calusa, who fought them off; by the 1700s, war and disease had emptied the chiefdom. Centuries later the pioneers came. William T. Collier founded the village of Marco in 1870, and his son, Capt. Bill Collier, opened the Olde Marco Inn in 1896 — still serving guests today. For decades the island ran on clams and oysters, canned at Caxambas Pass and shipped north.
Why People Visit Marco Island
Marco Island rewards visitors who want wide white sand, warm shallow water, and shells underfoot, with a rare depth of history close by. Add the boat trips into the Ten Thousand Islands and the year-round Gulf sun, and the case makes itself.
