Punta Gorda Beach

 

It may come as a surprise to many that there was once a Punta Gorda Beach miles away from the city.   Punta  Gorda Beach, which had various names over its life, was originally created as Chadwick Beach named after its  developers.  The Chadwick Brothers operated a fish packing business in Punta Gorda until 1926 when they sold it to the West Coast Fish Company. After the sale, Clay and Steve Chadwick and their families moved from Punta Gorda to Lemon Bay where they began the development of Chadwick Beach on Manasota Key. They had their property platted and filed dedicating roads to the County. When lots did not sell well due to lack of  access to the island, the  brothers worked with T.C Crosland to have a bridge built. The Chadwicks also built a "pavilion" on the beach which offered groceries, gasoline, dressing rooms and showers.

It was then in the 1930s that a portion of Chadwick Beach was renamed Punta Gorda Beach. A man named Lou Woods had purchased the property to develop, failed and worked a deal with Charlotte County to help sell the land if it were renamed “Punta Gorda Beach.”  This enabled the county seat in Punta Gorda to advertise at the 1933 Chicago World Fair that it had a beach on the Gulf of Mexico. The fact that the city and beach were 27 miles apart was not mentioned. Many Punta Gorda families purchased cottages at the Beach - some still own them.  

The Chadwick’s original pavilion was later converted into a Casino. A large, open-sided second floor was a popular spot for Saturday night dances. In 1945,  the place was largely lost to a fire, and later from the remnants in 1958 a restaurant was built that had several names over the years  including the White Elephant.  Around the same time the area was renamed from Punta Gorda Beach to Englewood Beach.  

In 2001 Charlotte County built the public access facilities known today as Englewood Beach at Chadwick Park, honoring the Chadwick family's original development of the area. Today harkening back to an original name the restaurant is now the White Elephant Pub. 

Information on Punta Gorda Beach was from works of Josephine Cortes and Diane Harris, staff of the White Elephant pub and the research of Vernon Peeples at the Punta Gorda History Center.