Venice

Venice's remarkable history covers its growth as an agricultural community in the nascent days of the Florida land market expansion with developers and promoters such as Bertha Honor Palmer and Dr. Fred Albee.

Its growth seemed assured when the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers decided to develop it as a planned community to be a vacation spot and retirement destination. The Great Depression dashed those plans, and the city teetered on the edge of becoming a historical footnote until it was saved by two key occurrences. The Kentucky Military Institute decided to take advantage of its climate and its railroad to use it for its winter quarters. The other was based on the efforts of another local promoter, Finn Caspersen, who in the days before World War II convinced the Army that the local vacant land and year-round flying weather would be perfect for an Army Air Corps training base. These events reinvigorated the area and foretold its growth into the city known today.

Author Margaret Mackle Kapustiak is a local historian, genealogy speaker, and researcher. The images in this book are courtesy of local city and county museums, libraries, archives, and historians.