Anna Maria Island in Manatee County, Florida

Photograph: Anna Maria island.jpg by Gzzz · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Restored from the credited Wikimedia Commons file, normalized to the consistent attraction-card frame and converted to WebP by 1stFlorida.com. Portrait originals retain their complete composition over a softly blurred extension of the same photograph.

Manatee County attraction

Anna Maria Island

Manatee County · Gulf Coast

A barrier island about seven miles long off Bradenton, holding three separate small cities and no high-rise buildings.

ABOUT THIS PLACE

From north to south they are Anna Maria, Holmes Beach and Bradenton Beach, each with its own government, and the differences between them are real enough that residents will correct you. Gulf Drive runs the length of the island and a free trolley works up and down it, connecting at either end to the county and Sarasota bus systems, which is why a visitor can leave the car parked for a week. Three bridges reach the island: the Anna Maria Island Bridge on State Road 64 from Bradenton, the Cortez Bridge on State Road 684, and Longboat Pass Bridge from Longboat Key to the south. Before the first wooden Cortez Bridge went up in 1921 the only way across was by boat. The resident population is small, a little over a thousand at the 2020 count, and skews old. Hurricane Helene in 2024 did severe damage here even passing about a hundred miles offshore; state surveyors called Bradenton Beach a catastrophic area, and rebuilding is still going on

GETTING THERE

Get Directions ↗Official place website ↗

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