My first memories of Caspersen Beach are from the early 1960s. I recall one summer afternoon in particular when my mother took my younger sister and me to explore a remote area that was, at the time, virtually unknown to all but the locals. I was about five. The car we were driving got stuck in the sandy road that led to the southern end of the beach. Fortunately two young men came to our rescue and freed the car from its sandy trap, and we were on our way. It was midsummer, hot, and our car had no A/C. Unlike the bleached white sand from the Sarasota beaches, the dark sands of Caspersen burned my feet and forever etched in my mind a different kind of Sarasota beach.
Throughout my junior high and high school years in Venice, Caspersen Beach was quite the hangout. It was a great place for bonfires and teenage mischief, isolated just enough to create a false sense of security. Fishing off the beach for snook and the occasional tarpon was a favorite activity for us as teens. My uncles suggested, with remarkable accuracy, that the snook surf fishing began with the blooming of the Royal Poinciana trees.
Much of Caspersen and all of the Venice Beaches to the north are unique to the Southwest coast of Florida in that they are not on barrier islands. Rather, they are the mainland gulf shore. Actually, Venice is not a natural island at all. It only became an island in 1967 when the last section of a canal (we called it “The Ditch”) was dug east of town connecting Roberts and Lemon Bays.
Some of the earliest documentation of Caspersen Beach comes from a British surveyor, Bernard Romans, who mapped the region in 1771. Under British control, Venice was know as “Horse and Chaise Point” and Caspersen as “Haulover” possibly referring to a place where longboats could be careened to remove barnacles.
An 1880’s reference to Caspersen billed it as a great place to harvest Loggerhead sea turtles. So bountiful were the turtles that a Key West fishery made an annual trip to Caspersen just to slaughter the numerous slow moving nesting females.
Sarasota County first leased Caspersen Beach from the Caspersen family in the late 1960’s. However, recognizing the rapidly increasing price for gulf-front real estate, the County purchased the property in two phases. In 1973 the 113 acres gulf side was purchased for $3.5 million dollars. The 146-acre mainland parcel (including Shamrock Park) was purchased in 1985 for $8 million. The money for both acquisitions came from voter-approved referendums. I was a member of Venice High School’s Ecology Club during the 1973 referendum and I can remember critics complaining about this waste of taxpayer money. Both parcels are now worth many times their initial capital cost, and will forever be priceless in terms of economic and social investments.
The blistering hot “black” sand of Caspersen Beach that I abhorred as a child is actually one of its most attractive features. The dark grains of sand are small fragments of fossilized prehistoric plants and animals. Not all are fragmented; many of the fossils remain intact and have become the treasures of fossil hunters from all over the world. Dr. Sonny Cockerel, well known for his archeological finds in Warm Mineral Springs, has inspired many a Venetian youth to dive for fossils just off the shores of Caspersen Beach.
Belinda Perry, at the time a County employee, professionalized the turtle monitoring methodologies that are now considered the research standard, at Caspersen Beach. Deurita Wozniak, a volunteer who worked with Belinda in the mid 1980’s, is the longest term volunteer at Caspersen and is still at it today. More sea turtles now nest at Caspersen Beach than anywhere else on the West coast of Florida. The warmer dark sand incubates the buried turtle eggs faster so the hatchlings are away before the typical Labor Day storms batter the beaches.
I have always been attracted to this beach, and my awe and appreciation for its grandeur has grown increasingly with my age. It should come as no surprise that Caspersen Beach has again received international attention. The July/August 2002 issue of National Geographic’s TRAVELER magazine has listed Caspersen Beach as one of America’s 40 beaches. The article cites Caspersens’s “abundances of serrated choppers” (sharks teeth) and its natural shoreline featuring “some 200 species of birds and other wildlife (including dolphins and manatees)”. What a great back yard we’ve got folks!