Naples Florida LifeNaples, Florida · 26.1420° N, 81.7948° W
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Gordon Drive on one side. Mangrove on the other. The canals behind the houses run straight out into it.
Two Kentuckians bought 112 lots and started building.
They put up hotels and the first infrastructure, and Naples was a winter resort from the beginning.
Collier County Centennial history
People live in the city year round.
That is the city of Naples itself. Collier County around it is much larger.
Billionaires on the 2026 Forbes list.
Eight of them list Naples. One lists Marco Island.
Forbes, 2026 billionaires list
One house on Gordon Drive.
Redfin ranked it the largest single home sale in America for 2025, ahead of two Los Angeles estates tied at $110 million.
Redfin, 2025 report
Several lots on the same street, bought together.
Redfin ranks the transaction the second largest in United States residential history, behind $238 million at 220 Central Park South in 2019. It happened on the same street and in the same month as the sale above.
Redfin, 2025 report
American alligator
Alligator mississippiensis
At rest it keeps only the eyes and nostrils above the surface. The rest of the animal is under the water.
Florida manatee
Trichechus manatus latirostris
It moves through the same canals the boats use, and comes up to breathe every few minutes.
Bottlenose dolphin
Tursiops truncatus
Dolphins work the passes on a moving tide, in the same water people fish from the pier.
Roseate spoonbill
Platalea ajaja
It feeds by sweeping its bill sideways through shallow water.
Bald eagle
Haliaeetus leucocephalus
It nests on dead pine snags and on cell towers, and hunts the same shoreline year after year.
Florida panther
Puma concolor coryi
It moves at dusk through palmetto and cypress. Most people who live here will never see one.
Florida black bear
Ursus americanus floridanus
It comes out of the pine flatwoods at the edge of neighborhoods, usually for what people leave outside.
Atlantic tarpon
Megalops atlanticus
It sits under dock lights at night and rolls at the surface to gulp air.
Somebody drew every lot line here, and the drawings still exist.
The plats were surveyed and filed before most of what stands here was built. They set the grid, the lot widths and the street names.
Put a plat next to a satellite image and the same lines are there. What sits on them has changed.
Most summer afternoons a storm builds inland and moves west to the coast.
It usually empties out over the beach and is gone within the hour.
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