History:
The Boca Grande History Center
Tells the Stories of Many Schools
Story & photos submitted by the Boca Grande Historical Society
Special thanks to Karen Grace
The Island School in Boca Grande is
the descendant of several schools that
preceded it. The fi rst school dates from
1893 and was located in a frame building on
4th Street, between Park and Gilchrist
Avenues. The same building was also used
as a church.
In the years that followed, several other
schools served the children of Gasparilla
Island. By about 1911, construction of a new
school on Gilchrist Avenue near 1st Street
began. By this time, the American Agricultural
Chemical Company had built the railroad
to move phosphate from mines in Central
Florida to the new port at the south end of
Gasparilla Island. The railroad created the
island’s third community, known as Port Boca
Grande. The new school on Gilchrist Avenue
served the children who lived at the port,
and in the village of Boca Grande. By 1916 a
small schoolhouse was also built in Gasparilla
Village, at the north end approximately
where the Boca Grande Resort is now – and it
educated the children of commercial fi shing
families who lived there.
The school building on Gilchrist Avenue
was two stories tall, built of wood and
painted yellow. It housed two classrooms
and a bathroom on each fl oor. Drinking
water came from large cypress tanks that
held rainwater caught on the building’s roof.
The school only educated children through
the eighth grade, and those who continued
on with their education did so at boarding
schools, or by living with friends or family in
Arcadia or Fort Myers.
In 1929 a new school was built on 1st
Street, and the Gilchrist Avenue building was
Gasparilla Village at north end of island
Boca Grande
School Class
of 1935