The Bridges of Marco Island

For over 50 years, Marco Island residents and visitors alike have been telling people about the first time they saw Marco Island from the top of the Marco River Bridge, built in 1969 and is now known as the Judge S.S. Jolley Bridge. And those with a little more history on the island tell people about crossing the old Goodland Swing Bridge, built in 1938. 

As we celebrate Collier County’s Centennial, the Jolley Bridge now has two spans and the Goodland Bridge, built in 1975, has been renamed the Stan Gober Memorial Bridge.

In 1923, the year Barron G. Collier founded Collier County, travel to the island was by boat or train. 

Craig Woodward, respected Marco Island attorney and historian, has a long history on the island. Woodward crossed the Goodland Swing Bridge on his first visit to the island with his parents in 1967. It was the only bridge onto the island at the time.

“My parents crossed the swing bridge in 1952,” Woodward said. “We came back in 1967 and crossed the same bridge and went to the beach. That was my first visit. Then we moved to Marco in 1968. Before the bridge, they had the ferry and the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad.”

The ferry carried automobiles and passengers across Marco River from the old Marco Road.

“The old Marco Road ran down through what’s now Rookery Bay,” Woodward said, "then it ran to the west of what is now State Road 951. That road is still there. If you drive down 951 and look off to the west, you'll see the large transmission lines. State Road 951 is where the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad came through. Obviously, the ferry closed shortly after the Goodland Swing Bridge opened. The Goodland Swing Bridge had a lot to do with the development of Goodland.”

The Atlantic Coast Line first crossed the Marco River in 1927. At one point during the Roaring ‘20s, Marco Island was serviced twice a day by the railroad, according to Charlton W. Tebeau's book, Florida’s Last Frontier: The History of Collier County. With train service, hopes were that the island would boom, according to Tebeau. But the onset of the Great Depression changed all that. The Atlantic Coast Line’s extension to Marco was abandoned in 1942. In the 1950s, Doc Loach, the developer of the Isles of Capri, turned the old railroad track bed into Isles of Capri Road, now known as SR 951.

In addition to its impact on the development of Goodland, the Goodland Swing Bridge made the development of Marco Island more realistic.

“Without that bridge, I don't think the Mackle Brothers would have bought on Marco,” Woodward said.

The Mackle Brothers, Elliott, Robert, and Frank, Jr., were the leaders of the Deltona Corporation, the developers of modern Marco Island, starting in the mid-1960s.

Faye Brown, who was born on Marco Island in 1942, remembers crossing the Goodland Swing Bridge as a child. 

“I was always afraid of falling through the cracks of the old wooden swing bridge,” Brown said, “especially when riding in the back of Mr. Kelly’s old fish truck. Sometimes, our daddy would take a group of teenagers to our church’s district fellowship meetings, and I rode in the back with them. Our daddy took a couple benches out of the church and placed one on each side of the truck for the kids to sit on. It was rough riding across that old bridge. I wasn’t a teen yet. Annette, my sister, would always carry our daddy’s big Gibson guitar along to play at the meetings. That’s the only bridge that I really remember while growing up on Marco. While driving across the bridge, it sounded to me that the planks were loose, and I was afraid that they would fall off into the water."

The Goodland Swing Bridge was approved as a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project in 1936. Interestingly, the bridge’s swing span was not new. “A wooden trestle-type bridge was built with a swing span over the channel,” Tebeau writes. “The swing span came from a Caloosahatchee River bridge at Fort Myers that was being replaced by a concrete structure.”

A young Woodward developed a close relationship with the bridge tender.

"Ivan Burley lived in Goodland and was a member of the church down there,” Woodward said. “I knew him well. He was our Boy Scout leader. So my brother Mark and I were in Boy Scouts. Ivan stuttered when he talked. He had a hard time getting words out. There was a little building out there on this island that was next to the bridge and that's where they stayed because it was manned 24/7. The boats would come up and blow a whistle or horn and the bridge tender would come out. I helped him. Probably some of the other Boy Scouts did, too. You kind of went down and hung out. The worst part was not actually turning the bridge. The worst part was you had to go to each end of the bridge. You can't just turn the bridge or the cars will fall into the river. So you had to walk to one end of the bridge and then lower this gate-like thing that had lights on it at night. Then you walk to the other end of the bridge and you lower it. Then you've got to turn the big crank handle. You stuck the handle in the hole and then you made like 20 trips around it. I've actually done that. Of course, then when the boat goes through, then you turn around and crank it back the other way and go back to each end of the bridge and open up the gates. But the problem was the mosquitoes. It was okay in the middle of the day or maybe late at night. At dusk, the last thing you wanted to do was go out there. It wasn't like we had mosquito control by airplane back in those days. I mean, I was eaten alive. Ivan was a great guy. He took us on Boy Scout trips. We camped at what is now Hideaway Beach.

The swing bridge remained in service until it was replaced by the Goodland Bridge in 1975. The 1,800-foot span, built at a cost of $2.5 million, was renamed the Stan Gober Memorial Bridge in November 2012. Gober, owner/operator of Stan’s Idle Hour, is arguably Goodland’s most famous resident ever. Stan started the Mullet Festival in 1985 and his famous Sunday Show in 1990. He passed on June 18, 2012.

The grand opening of the Marco River Bridge may have been the Deltona Corporation’s single biggest celebration. The sparkling $1.5 million, 1,595-foot concrete and steel bridge graced the front and back cover of the Winter 1970 edition of The Marco Islander Magazine, published by the Deltona Corporation. You could say the Marco River Bridge was the gateway to the development of modern Marco Island.

The Marco Islander boasted: “The 55-foot-high structure…reduces the Marco Island-Naples road mileage from 28 to 16.”

In its early years, the Marco River Bridge carried a toll.

“People have all these memories of what the toll was,” Woodward laughs, "but I'm telling you, I've got receipts. The first toll was 40 cents. My mom saved these for her tax records. I have a pile of those, with the date on them and everything, you know, stamped on it 40 cents.”

The toll was later reduced to 20 cents and then eliminated altogether.

One of the most popular features of the Marco River Bridge was its fishing catwalk system. Mark Creighton was a serious fisherman as a teenager growing up on Isles of Capri. He would put the fishing at the Marco River Bridge up against any.

“What was cool about the bridge is you could park down there and just hang out all night,” Creighton said. "You could have your rods out and while your rods were out, you could walk up and down the bridge, talk to people, see what they were catching. It was like a little community.”

The concrete catwalks extended 703 feet from each approach to the center channel passageway, according to the Marco Islander. They were built at a cost of $135,000. They were six feet wide with aluminum protective handrails. They were lit with mercury vapor promenade lamps. For Creighton, the catwalks were a fisherman’s dream.

“It was set up on the east side of the pilings,” Creighton said, "and it came right up to the parking lot. When you first started walking onto the catwalk, there were street lights right there. They shined out on the water. So one of the great places to snook fish was right there because you could see snook swimming out there in the shallow water right off the bank. That was one of my hot spots off the bridge.”

Creighton said it was not unusual to see 20 to 30 people on just one side of the catwalk. It was his favorite place to fish.

“Given the choice of fishing the Naples Pier or the bridge, I'd always choose the bridge,” Creighton said. "Absolutely. I fished the pier a lot, but if I had to pick one or the other to go to pinpoint a specific species I was looking for, I'd go to the bridge. The bridge was probably one of the best fishing spots in Collier County, if not the best.”

The catwalks were lost as changes to the bridge were made over the years, but fishing is still available from the shore.

Creighton even remembers taking part in a last day of school stunt at the toll booth.

"The last day of school,” Creighton said, “everybody going out to Marco would all drive slow, and we'd form a huge convoy of cars, and we'd all run to the toll booth. We'd all run the toll booth because it was, you know, 20 cents.”

The Marco River Bridge eventually became the Judge S.S. Jolley Bridge, named for former Collier County Judge Seward Stokley Jolley, who served from 1935 until 1959.

Though the island was abuzz after the name change, the Jolley Bridge has become the colloquial name for the iconic structure.

The second span was added as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, signed into law by President Obama. The cost was $25,500,000. It was completed in June 2011 and dedicated on November 19, 2011. The new span consists of two southbound traffic lanes. The original span handles northbound traffic.