“Bonita Springs has long been inhabited. Archaeological discoveries place people here about 8,000 years ago and mound building was well underway by 4,000 years ago. By the time Ponce de Leon sailed along our beaches and first made contact with the Calusa Indians in 1513, this area was home to thousands. Native American village remains and mounds attest to their centuries of prosperity. However, within a couple of centuries, the once mighty Calusa Chiefdom was decimated by European diseases and slave trading.
In the 1870s, Army Corps of Engineers’ surveyors mapped remote Southwest Florida and pitched camp along the upper Imperial River. After the crew left, the area and later, community, became known and recorded on maps as “Survey”. The river became known as “Surveyor’s Creek”.
Over the years, Survey developed from a scattering of homesteaders into a village. In 1901, a Post Office was opened, and in 1910 the two-story, Eagle Hotel was in business catering to visitors attracted to the unspoiled area’s bounty of hunting and fishing.
Later, developers decided that the name, “Survey”, lacked sales appeal, so the town was renamed “Bonita Springs”; Indian Spring Branch became the “Oak River”; and Surveyor’s Creek was renamed the “Imperial River”.”
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