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Some people are seduced by strange and exotic lands abroad, and though I admit a weakness for the faraway, I also seek out surreal — and often overlooked — landscapes close to home. While back home in Southwest Florida for the holidays, I rediscovered a few. (After you read about this one, we’d love it if you’d share some of your own!)
Rotonda Sands, the “Aborted Suburb”
I grew up in Southern Florida, the land of sleepy golf communities, condo developments and down-in-the-mouth pseudo-resorts. One of the best known such communities in my area was called “Rotonda,” the name-appropriateness of which becomes pretty obvious when the community is seen from the air (thanks, Google Maps). Founded in the 1960s, it’s about a mile in diameter and packed with golf courses and modest vacation homes — or at least, about 3/4 of its pie-shaped volume is. The other 1/4 pie-wedge never really came to fruition — despite, rumor has it, investments from such high-profilers as Ed McMahon and O.J. Simpson — and so for years the wedge, known as “Rotonda Sands,” sat undeveloped and largely untrammeled, even though overeager planners had gridded it with streets, cul-de-sacs, fire hydrants and even street signs; all the trappings of suburbia, with none of the houses.
Needless to say, by the time my friends and I had discovered this desolate locale some 30 years later, its streets now cracked, signage faded and lots wildly overgrown by aggressive Floridian undergrowth, it had become a surreal place indeed. Evidence of old campfires and piles of garbage made it clear that the only visitors to these empty cul-de-sacs (pictured) were drifters and teenagers looking for a good time away from prying eyes. (Also, drug planes had used its long streets as landing strips back in the 70s and 80s, though we never found any bricks of heroin among the weeds.)
My friends and I graduated and left town, and until last week, it had been years since I paid a visit to our local wasteland. Curious to see if the mid-2000s Florida housing boom had done anything to change Rotonda Sands’ state of perpetual purgatory, I drove down the other day. To my great surprise, what had been an empty grid for nearly 30 years was suddenly pocked with houses! But as I drove around, wondering who in their right minds would want to live way out in this peculiar boondock, it slowly dawned on me that, for the most part, the answer was nobody. The houses were either empty or, in most cases, unfinished — the hurricanes of 2004 and the decline in the housing market had dealt a one-two punch to the whole area, knocking Rotunda Sands back into the stone age just as it was getting to its feet.
If anything, the new ruins which now populate the Sands make it an even stranger and sadder place; it now has the feeling of a kind of architectural mausoleum or a bombed-out city, with the few people who actually finished their houses and moved in before the crash acting as its lonely caretakers — whereas before it had just been evidence of best-laid plans that never came to fruition. I’m told that the area has become a magnet for thieves; the air conditioning units and copper wiring left in the unfinished homes tend to disappear, eventually finding their way to the resale market.
More photos: it doesn’t take long for nature to start reclaiming its territory.
Most of the houses are identical in design; their only differences are the degree to which they’re unfinished.
The lizard loves his new house.
This blank billboard on the outskirts of Rotonda Sands kinda sums it up. (For sale: nothing!)
Comments (40)
Comment
- Follow mental_floss
I live in Ukraine and we see that kind of thing all the time here- but I had no idea you could find flocks of half-finished homes like that back home in the States… and the stealing and re-selling of copper wiring and a/c units- well that sounds like the former USSR, too. bizarre
posted by ann on 1-1-2008 at 8:56 am
My parents live in a suburb in central Florida that reminds me of this. It was in the process of being built when the housing market crashed, so it isn’t yet old enough to have the decaying shells of houses. It does have the fully completed streets that lead the nowhere, complete with cul-de-sacs consisting of nothing but empty lots. Always kind of spooky to walk through the neighborhood.
posted by Scott on 1-1-2008 at 9:24 am
That picture with the lizard explains it. Those houses are too small! You could barely get your fist through a window!
posted by Miss Cellania on 1-1-2008 at 10:53 am
In the 70s, the company with its high-pressure salespeople in Las Vegas was selling lots in Rotonda (and yes, the movie we watched was narrated by Ed McMahon). As soon as you made it through the presentation, you were immediately bombarded with the paperwork to sign for your choice of a lot on a golf course or on the marina (for your boat). If you managed to walk away from this harassment, you were given two free tickets to any show on the Strip. My husband and I went twice, a year apart, and were able to see some pretty great shows.
I always wondered what happened to the property and now I know.
posted by Adrienne on 1-1-2008 at 12:46 pm
It’s so eerie – like looking at pictures of Prypiat, Ukraine or Centralia, Pennsylvania.
posted by Melodye on 1-1-2008 at 3:34 pm
Thanks for the pictures! This reminds me of abandonedbutnotforgotten.com … you should submit your pictures there.
posted by Dave on 1-1-2008 at 7:14 pm
My wife’s grandparents live in Sunny Hills, FL.
it’s probably about 60 square miles of exactly what you describe. very eerie the few times we’ve driven up there.
if you google map for “Sunny Hills, Florida”, look to the south and southeast of where it puts you and you’ll see nothng but empty streets.
posted by Chris on 1-1-2008 at 7:49 pm
Hey! I was just visiting my dad in Englewood, FL and got lost in the Rotonda area! My husband and I were going “exploring” to find new restaurants and instead ended up going round and round and round. We didn’t find any restaurants, needless to say.
Patti S.
Ann Arbor, MI
posted by TeacherPatti on 1-1-2008 at 9:55 pm
Wow, if I lived there, I would be over to that area all the time, doing who knows what and filming amateur action movies and things like that.
posted by Tyler on 1-2-2008 at 8:38 am
I worked in the area for 25 yrs and Rotonda has grown up to be a large community.If you look at it from the air it’s pie shape,every pie section has street after street of homes and golf courses. In each golf course you find restaurents. All along the out side of the pie and each section are cannels full of fish, the Gulf of Mexico is just 5 minutes away.
Rotonda was the home of the Super Star TV show also.
Realy not a bad place, just affected by the housing slump
posted by Kirby on 1-2-2008 at 9:23 am
My aunt lives in one of the other pie segments, so I’ve seen this area, but not since prior to 2004. It’s a shame that some potentially really nice homes have been abandoned there.
posted by Lisa on 1-2-2008 at 9:55 am
I live in Florida, too (a little further up the west coast) and could probably show you half a dozen sites just like this — all of them within a 15 min. drive from my house. Hideous scars carved into once-beautiful pastures, full of streets that go nowhere, fronted by crumbling concrete facades studded with faded signs promising Paradise. It truly is beginning to look Third-worldish.
Thanks for the great post!
posted by Kathy on 1-2-2008 at 1:41 pm
What you have described is the result of the Mackle Brothers, who brought us Deltona, Rotunda, Spring Hill and others.
There are several 1960’s subdivisions that were built up in my area, Sebring, FL when I was a child. Whenever I go to these areas, it always strikes me as deja vu all over again. Spring Hill has street names that echo the other subs, like Deltona Blvd, or Linden Drive.
posted by jim davis on 1-2-2008 at 1:59 pm
Reminds me of the ghost resort town around the Salton Sea in Southern California.
posted by Pockafwye on 1-2-2008 at 3:13 pm
“Pockafwye Says:
January 2nd, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Reminds me of the ghost resort town around the Salton Sea in Southern California.”
That is exactly what I was going to say! I grew up in San Diego and took road trips across the desert many times. Ghost towns can be found all over the deserts in Southern California containing dilapidated trailers with dusty old rusted out cars piled around sitting in the middle of nowhere.
posted by Kelly on 1-2-2008 at 4:45 pm
It kinda looks beautiful, in its own fashion.
I think we need more waste lands like this, monuments to our insanity.
posted by peter on 1-2-2008 at 8:29 pm
What do you expect from a bunch of spam-suckin yahoos who couldn’t figure out a butterfly ballot and elected anyone named Jeb to governor…let alone anyone named Jeb Bush. I say let the lizards have the place…and set up a big fence to keep ‘em out of the Northwest.
posted by salmon on 1-3-2008 at 12:52 am
I grew up in Englewood, Fl and surprisingly some of my friends families still live in Rotonda. I went to LBHS there and it was a fantastic place to grow up- except for the fact that I was on the island. Most kids had nothing better to do than to smoke weed and start fires and get into all kinds of mischief. Hell, drug running I think used to be an olympic sport out there.
The town never really had anything going for it. Only when I was in middle school or high school did a Walmart first appear. While they usually bring in a lower class in high population areas, it was amazing to have a store opened later to get anything you needed. The first of its kind in this town.
I went down there for a friends wedding a year or so ago. I’m delighted to see Mama’s Pizza is still there. Vinnie is amazing to take on the place after his dad died.
You’d think someplace on the coast would revive itself but there’s really nothing else around. Barely any restaurants that are any good, a few bars, no entertainment. The nearest movie theater is probably 30 mins away at least. It’s hard to bring any of that in because a lot of the residents are snowbirds too and in the summer you’d be hurting for business.
Englewood, she just ain’t what she used to be.
posted by Christie Inskeep on 1-3-2008 at 8:06 am
I live in West Palm Beach–where is the Rotunda? I’ve seen this every now and then, and in a lot of the newest communities in this area, at least 25% are empty.
Heath
posted by Heath on 1-3-2008 at 9:42 am
Wow. It’s funny how you’re talking about where I’m currently /growing/ up. xD
I live in Port Charlotte, and my mother (and myself) hate driving through Rotonada.
It’s great to see people from these parts can grow up to do something with their lives.
(I’m actually on a computer at LBHS, atm)
posted by Aubry on 1-7-2008 at 1:35 pm
All of you are missing the point , Rotonda is not a “ghost town” google map it and look at a satellite pic of the area it is hugh.Ten’s of thousands of poeple live there. The area where Ransom is talking about Rotonda Sands is in the far lower right side and yes not very many poeple live there it was one of the last areas to be developed.
I know I was a firefighter for that area for 25 yrs and watched grow.
posted by Kirby on 1-9-2008 at 9:03 am
This is going to sound bizarre, but there is another aborted ‘rotunda’ style suburb that was proposed 80 years ago and never completed.
I was perusing the area behind Hume, in Canberra (Australia’s capital) in google maps and found map information for a suburb which literally isn’t there.
It’s called Environa and was planned to be a rich suburb until the Great Depression came about. It’s built around a ‘rotunda’ style and there is currently only one residency there, in the centre of the rotunda.
Contact me for more information including the original map proposal and history.
You can find the map and satellite imagery on Google Maps – search ‘Environa’ – there’s only one.
posted by moft on 2-15-2008 at 7:40 pm
We vacation at Palm Island, just across the intercoastal waterway by Johnny Leverock’s. I always see this on Google Earth and imagined this totally amazing area with golf courses and everything. So much for that!
posted by Cool on 2-15-2008 at 9:19 pm
I used to be a homeless rodeo clown but now i am a world class magician !
posted by FPM on 2-15-2008 at 10:32 pm
(Not Finished typing…)
GDC is who Built Rotunda {yes, the Mackle bros.}
Not far from Rotunda is a Part of North Port that is similar, built by GDC
And do a search on wikipedia for “The Compound ” another abandoned GDC plan in east FL.
posted by Lady Miss Jme on 2-16-2008 at 7:21 pm
I’ve really gotten interested recently in partly developed plots in Google Maps — where on the Maps part you can see lots of streets, but in the satellite view you can see that its just graded dirt streets with few or no buildings. Rotunda is more developed than this (20 years ago it might have qualified), but two good examples from my area are Rio Rancho Estates and the desert southeast of Los Lunas, both in the greater Albuquerque area of New Mexico. (You can enter Rio Rancho Estates directly into Google Maps, but the latter you’ll have to enter Los Lunas and then pan southeast.) Rio Rancho Estates (as well as about half of Rio Rancho which is adjacent) is a vast area of streets with nothing else. The area is comparable to Albuquerque itself. I’m not sure when this street plan was made, but I think that whoever the developers are they still expect to fill all that in someday. I don’t know much about the area near Los Lunas except that you can see a large street structure (actually extending pretty far south) in the satellite view.
I’ve started to collect these, and another great example (albeit with some houses here and there) is Salton City in California. If anyone knows of others, please email me at jaybrotz@yahoo.com.
posted by jay on 2-21-2008 at 1:19 pm
During a google search on “strange Los Angeles homes”, I somehow landed on your blog about Rotunda. It’s funny… a few years back when I lived in Miami, bad weather diverted my return flight to fly over the Gulf coast for a safer landing. We were flying beneath the clouds when I saw this wagon wheel formation on the earth below. It entranced me and I studied it’s form until it escaped my view.
When I got home I scanned the satellite maps to try and find it, but came up empty. Now I’ve found it!
But what’s even WEIRDER is discovering the name of this place. When I was around age four or five, during the early 70s, my parents almost bought property in a place called Rotunda. I was very little, but I remember it because the sales rep took us up into a small airplane and we flew over it. It was in the very early stages of development at that time. I remember seeing all the water … the gulf, the bay, the channels. I can’t remember why my parents never ended up buying, but it’s probably a good thing they didn’t!
posted by tamara on 2-24-2008 at 3:23 pm
That was a very interesting story. The pictures marched in time to the beat and that made it fun to read all the way through. Thanks for sharing :)
posted by Tom on 3-5-2008 at 7:40 am
If I may, I found another abandoned development. Well, they have streetlights, utilities, and streets, but no houses. It’s not profound because the trees block the view, but you can see the “price reduced” signs. The link is to an article I wrote on my new blog.
(Sorry if this is against the rules, I just thought it was cool. I’m also a long time commenter and feed subscriber, so it’s not like I’m spamming. Remove if you want.)
posted by NicoNicoNico on 11-18-2008 at 6:05 pm
This is a really good article and so informative. I Googled Rotunda to check it out b/c my father just put an offer down for a house there. Now, I’m scared. I hope and pray he changes his mind!
posted by Syd on 3-16-2009 at 2:57 pm
Rotunda is like deja vu. 20 years ago
my parents had a wonderful place in Port
Lucaya in Freeport, Bahamas. I would
typically go down once or twice a year to dive and gamble. On one of the rainy
days, I decided to do a little exploration of our island paradise and
discovered an uninhabited subdivision
with paved streets to nowhere, man-made
canals and even an abandoned low-rise
hotel…it seemed a perfect place to
stage a nether-world “Waiting for Godot”
or “Krapp’s Last Tape”. Now I don’t
even need a passport to discover man’s last refuge from himself.
posted by Chester on 3-16-2009 at 8:23 pm
I used to live in Lancaster, California in the 1990 and 1991. There were several developments like that in Lancaster and Palmdale (5 miles to the south) that were abandoned. One became famous in the movies. Lethal Weapon 3 (Mel Gibson & Danny Glover) burned down one such development in the movie. This was an actual housing development that had gone belly-up and sold out to the production company to be used in the movie.
posted by Gordon Daily on 6-18-2009 at 5:22 pm
The post WWI Florida Land Boom collapse in the mid twenties was brought about by a series of disasters from which the ‘29 crash made recovery impossible. After WWII, there were still large abandoned areas of street grids, sidewalks, fire hydrants and streetlights. They existed as communities on the maps, but only snakes, weeds and lizards resided at their addresses.
posted by Kerry on 6-19-2009 at 9:11 am
My brother and his wife have lived in Florida for about 10 years now. When I turned 16, I came down to visit them and they took me to one of these abandoned neigborhoods and taught me how to drive! It was perfect. Clear roads, roadsigns, and no one (and nothing) that I could hit. Very cool.
posted by Jen C. on 6-19-2009 at 10:14 pm
I used to live in the California high desert. A town had been developed there that had alot of the streets placed and named, but with little developement. Known as ‘California City’ it still seems as though there is still plenty of room to grow.
posted by Jerry M on 6-24-2009 at 12:30 pm
@Peter “Monuments to our insanity” I LOL’d!
Another Florida ghost town I’ve heard about is Rosewood. Supposedly it was an all-black township supported by a grain mill until one of its residents was accused of raping the (white) sheriff’s daughter. A mob descended on the town, massacred the residents, and set most of the town on fire. That’s what I’ve heard, anyway. Google Maps shows Rosewood as a series of empty lots and streets.
posted by Rory on 7-7-2009 at 12:24 pm
Isn’t Rotonda’s biggest claim to fame the fact that when it was first being developed, back in the 1970s, it was the site of ABC-TV’s “Superstars” competitions?
And which is the correct spelling? Rotonda or Rotunda?
-”BB”-
posted by Bicycle Bill on 9-15-2009 at 6:27 pm
This was a very interesting article, but I’m afraid when you look at this neighbourhood on google maps / street view, it’s the antithesis of “abandoned”. A portion in the lower 1/4 appears to be a bit run down, but I would hardly describe it as deserted. However, if you happen to be looking at it on google maps, zoom out a bit and see the sattelite view which exposes TENS of miles of grid-patterned streets in the surrounding areas which feature only 1 or 2 (sometimes run down) homes each – just crazy.
posted by googsleuth on 9-17-2009 at 7:44 am
I find these places fascinating as well. We had an abandon half built mansion in east Honolulu (Henry J Kaiser of Kaiser Permente died during the construction) It takes up acres of prime Hawaii real estate on a bay. Has three seperate units, including a cafeteria. The most surreal part is the 60s technological equipment throughout the house. If you ever make it to Hawaii, check it out.
posted by Marty on 9-24-2009 at 5:02 pm
Try the entire city of Detroit. It’s gradually reverting to prairie.
posted by Lichanos on 9-30-2009 at 8:46 pm