Marco Island, FL

The carved wooden Key Marco Cat records a much older chapter of Marco Island than its modern development. Calusa people inhabited the island and southwest Florida by about 500 CE, and the artifact is displayed at the Marco Island Historical Museum on loan from the Smithsonian Institution. Marco Island is a Collier County city and the largest barrier island in Southwest Florida’s Ten Thousand Islands area, about 20 miles south of Naples on the Gulf of Mexico. Its population declined from 16,413 in 2010 to 15,760 in 2020. Clam digging became an important island industry in the early 1900s, while large-scale development during the 1960s established the present community. The island has a tropical wet-and-dry climate, with most rainfall occurring from June through October.