1: Front Cover
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This booklet was published in either 1927 or 1928 (we're leaning towards 1927 due to the mention of the 1926 Tarpon Tournament) by The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers in an attempt to lure northern vacationers into coming to Venice. It touts Venice as a cosmopolitan ideal, a city created and planned from the beginning. The B.L.E. owned The Venice Land Company, which in turn had purchased most of what is now downtown Venice. From 1925 to 1929, the B.L.E. was heavily promoting land sales in the area. The B.L.E. also built three hotels here, all completed by January of 1927. The B.L.E.'s involvement with Venice ended in 1929, the year of the Wall Street Crash. By then, their accumulated losses in Venice totaled $18 million.
As you are looking at these photos and reading the text, remember the time frame. This was four years after the Rosewood Massacre and two years before the Wall Street Crash of 1929 that caused the Great Depression. Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were wearing Yankee pinstripes. Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in August of 1927. Calvin Coolidge was President, and prohibition was in full force.
U.S. 41 was the main road through the area, a dirt road that was prone to being unusable in places during and after heavy rains. The town itself looks dusty, dry and barren in these photos, and for good reason. We were waiting for a land boom that wouldn't arrive until 1942 -- that's the year that the U.S. Army Air Corps built their military base here.
This publication was found almost accidentally on an online auction, and was subsequently purchased by Venice Florida! dot com. We took great care in handling and scanning this historic document, which is near pristine condition. It has since been donated to the Venice Archives And Area Historical Collection.
2: Frontispiece
