08/20/2026
More of the Harmon negatives with information about the image.
Matlacha — When It Was Still Old Florida.
Sometimes an old photograph shows much more than buildings and roads. It captures a landscape in the middle of becoming something new.
This wonderful aerial photograph of Matlacha was found among a collection of negatives donated by the Harmon Family to the Southwest Florida Historical Society. I recently colorized the image, and the added color really brings out just how different Matlacha once looked.
The photograph appears to date from around the 1940s era, when Matlacha was still a small fishing community surrounded by an enormous amount of untouched water and mangroves.
Matlacha's modern story really began in the 1920s.
When Lee County constructed the road and bridge connecting the mainland with Pine Island, dredges dug shell, sand and other material from Matlacha Pass. The material was used to create the roadway and bridge approaches. That dredging produced additional land that eventually became part of the little community known as Matlacha.
The first wooden bridge opened in 1927, and the area around it soon attracted fishermen and families looking for an inexpensive place to live.
Matlacha became known simply as “The Fill.”
By the 1930s and 1940s, small wooden houses, fishing camps, docks and businesses began appearing along Pine Island Road. Commercial fishing was an important part of everyday life. Boats and nets were everywhere, and the waters surrounding Matlacha provided fish, oysters and other seafood that helped families make a living.
During World War II, servicemen stationed at Page Field and Buckingham Army Airfield also discovered Matlacha. Many came out to fish from the old wooden bridge, helping it earns its famous reputation as the “Fishingest Bridge in the World.”
But what really catches my attention in this photograph is the land itself.
Look at the foreground.
Large areas have been dredged and filled, with long straight cuts extending into the water. It is a dramatic reminder that much of the Matlacha landscape we recognize today did not always exist in its present form. This photograph may have caught a land-development project while it was actually underway.
Then look beyond the dredging.
There is almost nothing there.
A narrow line of little houses follows Pine Island Road, while beyond them stretch miles of open water, mangrove islands and undeveloped shoreline. It is the Southwest Florida landscape that existed before the tremendous growth that would come during the following decades.
Matlacha was formally platted in 1947 as the Pine Island Fill Subdivision, an appropriate name considering how this unusual little community came into existence. The plat can be found in Plat Book 8 Page 86.
Today Matlacha is known for its colorful buildings, artists, fishermen and unmistakable Old Florida personality. But this photograph takes us back to an earlier Matlacha—when the houses were few, the mangroves seemed endless, and fishing wasn't a tourist attraction.
It was a way of life.
And thanks to the Harmon Family, who saved these old negatives and donated them to the Southwest Florida Historical Society, we are able to look down on Matlacha as it appeared generations ago.
Colorized from the original Harmon Family negative.
Joanne Iwinski Miller 2026
