A Peaceful Wilderness Oasis

The sky was a bright royal blue contrasting with a few small fluffy white clouds. There was no wind, and the only close sounds were those of fish jumping in the waterway. Further away, a sleek private jet was soaring high into the sky. Just below me at the canal’s edge, an alligator was lounging silently. I knew better than to get any closer, as I had previously experienced how fast these creatures can move. Across the narrow waterway was an abundance of birds in the mangroves.

No, I was not in the middle of the remote Everglades. In fact, Marco Island was not even four miles from where I stood, and the Marco Island Executive Airport was only a mile down the road. Mainsail Drive is at the second traffic light coming off the island and dead ends at the airport. In 1965, an airstrip was opened on Marco Island where Landmark Street is now. It was built to bring prospective land and home buyers to the island. Later, the grass-strip airport was moved to the State Road 92 area and eventually moved off the island.

Marco Island’s first developer, the Deltona Corporation, planned to build a new development there that never materialized due to environmental concerns and restrictions. Hence, the Marco Island Executive Airport was no longer located on Marco Island.

To confuse matters further, this area, called Marco Shores, is officially part of Naples.

The airport was enlarged by an additional 1,000 feet featuring a 5,000-foot runway, and in 2012, a parallel taxiway was added. Until halfway through the 1980s, Marco Island Airways offered scheduled service to Miami and later, even to Tampa. But in 1984, the airline was bought by Provincetown-Boston Airline (PBA). After two years they went defunct and there has been no scheduled service from the airport since 1986.

Nevertheless, the airport flourished and a new terminal was opened in 2021. (See my story in Coastal Breeze News of May 6, 2021). Surprisingly, I was the only one present to watch the wrecking ball crashing down on the roof when the charming little Polynesian-style airport building was demolished. In less than an hour, an era filled with history was gone. It was a forced situation as the FAA determined that the building was too close to the runway. The nostalgic days of scheduled flights from Marco Island Airways were gone for good. Admittedly, the new two-story terminal is spectacular for such a small airport.

According to staff, the airport handles an astounding average of 150 to 160 take-offs and landings daily without a control tower. Recently, I personally counted as many as nineteen jets on the tarmac. The road that leads here has four lanes with condominiums on both sides, mostly built after the airport was opened. The Hammock Bay golf course is also on this street.

The original two-story buildings of Mainsail Apartments, dating back to early 1980, were built along the man-made canals and are generally considered part of Rookery Bay National Estuarine Reserve waterway parallel to the road. Fortunately, traffic from and to the airport has not diminished the abundance of wildlife in the mangroves bordering the canal.

Flashy sports cars and limousines transporting the jet set seldom stop on their way to and from their sleek private jets. If the wind direction is right, the silence can be almost deafening in the absence of traffic sounds from Route 951. From the back of the Mainsail condos, wildlife still rules, birds squawk, mating alligators make loud bellowing noises, and even the occasional low growls of panthers can be heard. From their balconies, second-floor residents get the feeling they are enjoying a riverboat on the Amazon in Peru or the Mekong River in Asia instead of next door to a busy tourist destination.

As a photographer, I have spent countless hours on this waterway photographing herons, ospreys, and egrets, as well as alligators, tarpon, and other fish. For 45 years, I have worked on Marco Island, boated through the Ten Thousand Islands of the Everglades from here to Everglades City and still fail to understand how this short two-mile canal, so close to busy traffic, has remained a peaceful wilderness oasis.

Ewout Rijk de Vries and his wife, Jill, brought America Travel Arrangements to Marco Island 40 years ago. They specialize in high-end adventure tours and small safari groups for clientele all over the world, but also are experts on high-end cruises with the help of longtime assistant and friend, Michelle Wegman. In combination with his writing and photography, Ewout has visited over 100 countries.