• • In the early years of the 20th Century, the waters around Useppa and Gasparilla Islands became world famous for tarpon fishing, attracting many wealthy sportsmen. Publisher and land-owner Barron Gift Collier, whose name is commemorated in Florida's Collier County, built a vacation estate here. Collier's guests included MAE WEST, Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Gloria Swanson, the Rockefellers, and Zane Grey.
• • His home is now the Collier Inn, which sits atop the island's highest point (37 feet above sea level) — — also the highest in south Florida.
• • American advertising entrepreneur Barron Gift Collier [23 March 1873 — 13 March 1939] became the largest landowner and developer in the State of Florida (as well as the owner of a steamship line, a telephone company, a chain of hotels, bus lines, several banks, and newspapers). By age twenty-six, he was worth a million dollars.
• • In 1911, Barron Collier and his wife Juliet vacationed in Fort Myers, Florida and fell in love with the area. For the sum of $100,000 they bought nearby Useppa Island. The island was reputed to be the place where Jose Gaspar, the Spanish pirate had held one of his favorite female captives — — Useppa — —a century earlier.
• • Island cottages, rooms, and suites at the Collier Inn can be rented. Info: 888-735-6335. It could be very interesting to sleep on the same island where Mae stayed during the 1930s.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: Mae West • • to come • •
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Mae West.
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