WATER & COAST
Sanibel Island
Lee County · Gulf Coast
A barrier island of about six thousand four hundred residents off Fort Myers, reached by causeway from Punta Rassa.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
Sanibel lies east and west where almost every other barrier island on this coast lies north and south, and it sits on a shallow plateau reaching out into the Gulf. Those two facts together are why the shelling here is what it is: the island works like a scoop, and what the Gulf carries in piles up on the south beaches. The causeway opened in 1963 and the building that followed alarmed residents enough that they incorporated as a city in 1974 for the express purpose of controlling it. The Sanibel Plan that came out of that holds buildings to two or three stories, with only pre-1974 exceptions, and keeps chain restaurants off the island apart from those already there. More than half the land is wildlife refuge. A shared use path runs more than twenty-five miles, so most residents get about by bicycle. Hurricane Ian cut the causeway in three places on September 28, 2022, and cut the island off; emergency repairs reopened it within weeks and permanent work followed
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