In that year, the Boca Grande Land Company,
an entity of the American Agricultural Chemical
Company, which owned most of the island, decided
to build a hotel there. Peter Bradley, whose office
was in Boston, was in charge of the development
of the company’s property.
By 1912, that original hotel was expanded
considerably by Tampa architect Francis Kennard,
who had designed Belleair’s Belleview Biltmore
Hotel for railroad magnate Henry Plant. The
new resort opened in 1913 as the Gasparilla Inn,
and still stands today. The resort had a casino
(not for gambling, but for parties and nightly
entertainment), tennis courts, a bandstand, a beach
club and bathhouse, along with a croquet lawn
and a nine-hole golf course.
Some of the hotel’s prominent and wealthy guests
formed a fishing club named the Pelican Club in
1914. The next year, the inn was so successful
that the owners doubled its size. It continued to
successfully lure fishermen and their families to this
heavenly spot. In 1930, Barron Collier, who owned
Lee County’s nearby Useppa Island, purchased
the Gasparilla Inn and made changes to enhance
it. He also built 10 detached cottages for guests. In
154 TAMPA BAY MAGAZINE | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2017
The restored lighthouse at the western
end of Boca Grande has been a nautical
marker for Boca Grande since the 1890s.
1932, a special room was added for the members of
the Pelican Club, where trophies were displayed
and members could mix and mingle privately
with each other.
After Collier’s death, the inn was sold in 1961
to a syndicate of winter residents that included
Du Pont heir Bayard Sharp. By 1964, he had bought
out his fellow investors. Sharp spent millions on
the project, constantly updating and improving the
resort. In 1979, he purchased the already popular
Pink Elephant restaurant to add another dining
option for his guests. When Sharp died in 2002,
the Gasparilla Inn and its properties were taken
over by his daughter Sarah’s family. Sarah had
married William Farish, a successful businessman
who was the U.S. ambassador to the Court of
St. James, owner of a Kentucky horse farm, and the
president of Churchill Downs from 1992 until 2001.
Currently, the Gasparilla Inn & Club, which
has 137 guest rooms, including 63 in the main inn
and 74 in the surrounding cottages, is open from
October to the first week of July. It still draws
wealthy socialites and sports fishermen who seek
to reel in one of the up to 250-pound shiny, silverscaled
tarpon that gather in this “Tarpon Capital of