Classic Cracker
Just when you think the flavor of Old Florida’s been lost forever, along comes a little out-of-the-way Cracker community that restores your faith in the healing powers of a quiet dockside sunset, the unpretentiousness of a simple clapboard cottage neighborhood—and mullet.
Historic Cortez Village is just that community. Tucked along the northeast part of Sarasota Bay in Sarasota" target="_blank">Manatee County, just east of the Cortez Bridge to Bradenton Beach, Cortez Village is the old-fashioned fishing village time forgot.
Here, generations of commercial fishermen still ply their craft among the mangrove islands, flocks of pelicans still glide and swoop after them with abandon, and, when the sun goes down, t-shirt-clad tourists gather at the dockside restaurants to savor the fresh-off-the-boat seafood.
Cortez Village is a bona-fide historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places, thanks to its 92 homes and public buildings—a white clapboard church, a one-room schoolhouse, a net camp—that date from the turn of the last century.
And that mullet?
Well, according to the Cortez Village Historical Society, the community was founded in the 1880s by three families from North Carolina—the Fulfords, the Guthries and the Jones—who moved here to try their hand at mullet fishing. For decades, they and the fishing families that joined them, have made their livings from the abundant mullet that live in the waters of Sarasota Bay.
Some new, very upscale housing is planned, not in the tiny village itself, but across Cortez Road. But the beauty of Cortez Village, as one longtime resident puts it, is that “neighbors who have inherited their homes and don’t have two nickels to rub together can live peacefully with multimillionaires.”
?Each February, thousands of visitors turn out for the Cortez Commercial Fishing Festival, a two-day extravaganza of good food, good music, nautical arts and crafts, children’s activities and exhibits by environmental organizations (next year to be held Feb. 16 and 17; visit www.cortezfishingfestival.com for details).
Says a local booster: “Cortez Village is full of people who appreciate the place for what it is, not for its potential.”
Historic Cortez Village is just that community. Tucked along the northeast part of Sarasota Bay in Sarasota" target="_blank">Manatee County, just east of the Cortez Bridge to Bradenton Beach, Cortez Village is the old-fashioned fishing village time forgot.
Here, generations of commercial fishermen still ply their craft among the mangrove islands, flocks of pelicans still glide and swoop after them with abandon, and, when the sun goes down, t-shirt-clad tourists gather at the dockside restaurants to savor the fresh-off-the-boat seafood.
Cortez Village is a bona-fide historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places, thanks to its 92 homes and public buildings—a white clapboard church, a one-room schoolhouse, a net camp—that date from the turn of the last century.
And that mullet?
Well, according to the Cortez Village Historical Society, the community was founded in the 1880s by three families from North Carolina—the Fulfords, the Guthries and the Jones—who moved here to try their hand at mullet fishing. For decades, they and the fishing families that joined them, have made their livings from the abundant mullet that live in the waters of Sarasota Bay.
Some new, very upscale housing is planned, not in the tiny village itself, but across Cortez Road. But the beauty of Cortez Village, as one longtime resident puts it, is that “neighbors who have inherited their homes and don’t have two nickels to rub together can live peacefully with multimillionaires.”
?Each February, thousands of visitors turn out for the Cortez Commercial Fishing Festival, a two-day extravaganza of good food, good music, nautical arts and crafts, children’s activities and exhibits by environmental organizations (next year to be held Feb. 16 and 17; visit www.cortezfishingfestival.com for details).
Says a local booster: “Cortez Village is full of people who appreciate the place for what it is, not for its potential.”
Ilene Denton is managing editor of Tampa Bay Homebuyer.