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Longboat Key in Florida

Saturday, 27 December 2025 - 11:00 am (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination: North America / Nordamerika
Category/Kategorie: General Reading Time:  5 minutes

🔊 Listen to this Post Longboat Key is a town in Manatee and Sarasota counties along the central west coast of the U.S. state of Florida, located on and coterminous with the barrier island of the same name. Longboat Key is south of Anna Maria Island, between Sarasota Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. It is almost equally divided between Manatee and Sarasota counties. The town of Longboat Key was incorporated in 1955 and is part of the North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area. The town’s population was 7,505 at the 2020 census, up from 6,888 at the 2010 census.

Longboat Key was originally inhabited by Native Americans. The area of what is now Longboat Key was scouted by Juan de Añasco, the first known European to explore the key and Hernando De Soto’s as his scout. He spent about two months attempting to find a landing site, and he was also most likely the first European man to see and explore Sarasota Bay, Boca Ciega Bay and the Manatee River. According to local legend, he believed the Indians were hostile. When the party reached land on the island, the Indians fled leaving their Longboat in a bayou. Pirate Jean Lafitte was said to have been shipwrecked near or on Longboat Key.

Jewfish Key is an island that covers 38 acres (150,000 m²) located within city limits. The island is only accessible via boat and the eastern part of the key is a nature reserve. Electricity is provided via underwater cables and there are no landline phone lines to the key. Residents of the island get water from wells and use septic tanks. Until the 1930s, Jewfish Key was two islands: Pickett Key to the north and Fisherman’s Key located to the south. When the US Army Corps of Engineers dredged the Intracoastal Waterway they needed a place to deposit the spoil; and the two owners (whose last names were Jordan and Zeisse) allowed for the spoil to be placed in order to make a single island in exchange for a deed to this now one island and “a case of whisky”. The island’s name comes from when local fishermen started calling the island Jewfish Key because they caught large amounts of Goliath groupers or Jewfish there.

Longboat Key is located north of St. Armands Key, with its circle of shopping and dining, and Lido Key, and south of Bradenton Beach, Holmes Beach, and Anna Maria, which are located on the adjacent Anna Maria Island. The nearby cities of Sarasota and Bradenton and the Sarasota–Bradenton International Airport rounds out Longboat Key’s varied list of geographic amenities. State Road 789 (Gulf of Mexico Drive) runs the length of the island, with ancillary boulevards branching off to residential neighborhoods. From some locations one can see both Sarasota Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.

At other points the island widens and accommodates various homes owned by both singly and in condominiums, hotels, and sports clubs. Some Longboat Key residents are “snowbirds“, who vacation at or own second homes on Longboat Key, and are present only during the winter months. Others are homesteaders, utilizing the various homestead exemptions provided to Florida citizens who own and occupy their principal residences within the state, as set forth under the Florida Constitution.

Most of the Gulf side of Longboat Key consists of beaches. The southernmost area of the key is mostly part of the Longboat Key Club.

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