Tin City: Naples Before the Condos
Near Naples, Florida
Before Naples became Florida's moneyed Gulf Coast enclave, its waterfront had a rougher character. Tin City, as it came to be called, traces back to early commercial fishing families who built along the bayfront. They built docks and tin-roofed sheds to service boats working the rich waters of Naples Bay.
The area became the working heart of a fishing economy that sustained the town through the Depression and the sparse postwar years before development took hold. Today the waterfront has been reimagined as a waterside marketplace, but the name Tin City still nods to those fishing families whose boats, nets, and practical corrugated-metal sheds preceded everything that came after.
