Keewaydin Island Homes Naples

Keewaydin Island is a stunning key, no stunning is not profound enough, pristine, idyllic and uniqe key, located just fifteen munites by boat from Naples. Most of Keewaydin -or Key Island as it is sometimes known - is mostly preserve, but there are a handful of wonderful homes here that are the pride and joy of their owners. This Caribbean island just minutes away from the mainland is the perfect retreat for owners who demand peace and tranquility in a secure and natrual environment, but with the modern amenities of everyday life within reach.

Replete with iguanas and beautiful resident native birds, bald eagles, wild pigs, ospreys and a whole lot more, Keewaydin - sometimes known as Key Island - is a little oasis of Florida how it was hundreds of years ago and it draws boaters every weekend to its southern shoreline who socialize in this pristine enviroment.

The following is an excerpt taken from a book writen by our resident realtor in Naples, Marlene Graham who is also a journalist and author.

Getting to Know Key Island!

By Marlene Graham

Imagine a subtropical island with long white sand beaches and an abundance of solitude. A place where the sound of the breeze blowing gently through the trees blends into the surging to and fro of often-reticent waves.

Now imagine a subtropical island where folks gather together boat after boat to fly kites, have a few beers and chit-chat with friends. Tropical music blends into the sounds of hip-hop as children chase the surf, oftentimes treated to a multitude of small conchs, ghost crabs and starfish along a foamy perimeter.

This is a place where you’ll not find one single retail shop, and only a handful of well-concealed homes that in gleeful penance to being part of paradise operate on generators, solar energy, and captured rainwater.

Sounds so far away doesn’t it? A world away from the hustle of daily life. Yet it’s only a few minutes from Naples by boat. This is Keewaydin Island, a state preserve that launches itself above the waterline just south of Gordon Pass before continuing onward eight more miles toward the Isles of Capri.

Keewaydin Island has for years been the playground of boaters, especially at its southernmost tip where the gulf and bay come together, and the distant towers of Marco Island shoot upward in stark contrast. The barrier island is both a state preserve and the location of some 50-plus platted lots, many of which have yet to be built upon.

But starting back in the mid-1930s and onward until its sale in 1995, it was the location of the “Keewaydin Club” founded by Chestman Kittridge as a rustic getaway for a privileged few. Kittridge, a member of the board of directors of an international chain known as the Keewaydin Camps, saw this unspoiled island as the perfect locale for a rough-hewn inn edged by a number of quaint cottages. The resulting resort opened to the public in 1936. And with so many guests wanting to stay for so many weeks, there was even schooling on the island up until 1943, allowing families to extend their winter stays. Guests were ferried across Gordon Pass from the southern tip of Port Royal on the 21-foot “Kokomis” built of Florida mahogany, native cypress and yellow pine.

But things started changing in the early 1990s. That was when some 2,000 acres of the island was sold to the State of Florida as preserve land, becoming part of the more than 11,000 acres of surrounding area known as the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. The remaining 58 acres of the island was then platted for residential development. These days a grouping of homesites can be seen at the island’s northern end, with a few more dwellings speckled here and there headed south.

Normally when we travel the 25 minutes or so to the tip of Key Island, taking into account “slow zones” for manatees, we go by way of the intercoastal waterway. But more than once, we’ve made our 21-foot Key West deck boat test its mettle in paralleling the island’s sandy shores, though admittedly only on relatively calm Gulf days.

On our most recent visit to Keewaydin just weeks ago, however, we were back to the intercoastal. But this time we didn’t do our usual wakeboarding or kneeboarding or hanging out on the beach. Nope. We and some friends decided to do the real estate thing for fun. We checked out several of the island’s beach to bay lots, ranging in price from the $600,000s to $3.1 million. From high and dry to low and marshy, from cleared of exotics to thick and impenetrable, we got up to island speed very quickly.

We learned that iguanas DO live on the island. We learned that beautiful birds are not in short supply. We learned that on a tropical paradise you do still have the occasional sandburr. And we learned that dolphins don't need much of an invitation to put on a show; and that looking out at that show from a coconut framed property is darned enjoyable. We could have lingered all day. If only there had been a cabana boy ready with those tangy tropical drinks. Oh, yeah, that's right, this is our own paradise, so next time we'll have to bring the ingredients. And as they say in Jamaica: No problem.

Back on board the boat, we puttered on toward the island's tip, then back northward, more acutely aware of the land's natural communities, described by conservationists as coastal scrub, pine flatwoods, tropical hardwood hammocks, coastal strand, mangrove forests and, of course, open beach. Most of the vegetation is appreciated for what it is, though not the invasive Australian pine or the Brazilian pepper tree, both of which are stars on the eradication list due to their penchant for snuffing out native species.

We also saw plenty more beautiful shore birds, and ospreys, and kept our eyes open for little wild pigs which we did see once on an earlier journey, though not on this day. Keewaydin is also noted for the gopher tortoise, the bald eagle, sea turtles, burrowing owls, and mangrove cuckoos.

Five hours after setting off for a three-hour cruise we were back: a bit red-faced from forgetting to take advantage of the sunscreen lotion on board, and amazingly tired. But it was a good tired. Our mini-vacation had indeed proved an escape from the ordinary, yet so incredibly close to the ordinary.

Assuming, of course, that we’re even allowed to call Naples “ordinary.”

Note: Marlene Graham is a noted traveler and the author of the book “Headfirst Into America” about her family’s year-long adventure through all 50 states.  

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