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BONITA SPRINGS

A new business transfer from Michigan was quoted recently in the local paper saying she thought she’d died and gone to heaven. It’s easy to see why. Bonita lies midway on the busy I-75corridor from Naples to Ft. Myers, between the Big Cypress and the Gulf of Mexico, sprawled along the narrow, beautiful tropical Imperial River.

It has an old downtown, modern shopping, good schools, a diversity of excelent housing options, a decent infrastructure, and more than its fair share of great beaches. It shares a rich and beautiful natural resource, the Estero Bay Aquatic Preserve, home to Lee County’s recently established “Great Calusa Blueway,” an excelent trail for paddlecraft.

And the fishing is outstanding. Some 60 years ago the tiny hamlet of Bonita Springs already promoted itself as the home of the best snook, redfish, and trout fishing on Florida’s West Coast.

More about the Beaches. First of all, it’s not walled off by massive high rises. Bonita Beach is almost entirely low-rise, single family homes. But the county and city authorities wanted to guarantee public access to the beach, so long ago they established adequate parking where Bonita Beach Road meets the Gulf of Mexico, and then added 12-car minilots every couple of hundred feet the entire length of the beach.

There are miles of sand and excelent shelling stretching from New Pass on the north to Wiggins Pass on the south. And there’s more: on Lovers Key the county has established Carl Johnson Park, another excelent Gulf beach you reach by a wheeled tram that runs constantly. Again, there’s plenty of parking.

This beach, just south of Estero Island (Ft. Myers Beach) also serves the metro area to the north, but it’s not used much.

And no quick overview of Bonita Springs would be complete without mentioning Everglades Wonder Gardens.

Some 50 years ago Bill and Les Piper established this uniquely Florida zoo to provide a permanent home for endangered black bear, panthers, and giant alligators. It lies in Old Town at the Imperial River, and is well worth a stop.