Chicago’s Bertha Palmer bought more than 80,000 acres around Sarasota after 1910. Her sons gave part of it to the state in her memory, and it became part of Myakka River State Park.
The Florida Legislature named a 34-mile stretch of the Myakka the state’s first Wild and Scenic River in 1985. Before that, the valley was a cattle and swine ranch that the CCC spent the 1930s turning into a park.
John Ringling turned circus profits into a Sarasota empire of Venetian architecture, a world-class art museum, and a vision that shaped an entire city’s identity.