Cortez - a Bit of Old Florida - Ron Mayhew

I spent a little time wandering around Cortez, a tiny commercial village on Sarasota Bay. It’s like a step back in time and a reminder of what Old Florida must have been. The weather was not cooperative. Heavy overcast and threatening rain. But I was able to make a few images and eat some awesome fish tacos.

Cortez was first settled in 1888 by some folks from North Carolina. The community has survived ever since despite dwindling fisheries, global warming, and rising sea levels. How much longer is the question.

Much of the fresh seafood available in SW Florida comes off of boats that work out of Cortez. Fish and shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico, and blue and stone crabs, and mullet from Sarasota Bay.

Florida isn’t so much a place where one goes to reinvent oneself, as it is a place where one goes if one no longer wished to be found.

 ___Douglas Coupland

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

___Henry David Thoreau