MARCO ISLAND — Much like the community it serves, the Marco Eagle has come a long way since its first appearance on the island. The first eight-page edition of the island’s only local newspaper was produced from a 20-by-15-foot room in Marco Highlands on March 31, 1968.

A lot happened nationally in 1968 including the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the election of Richard Nixon as president. But these weren’t the top stories in the 1968 Marco Eagle. Rather, the first front page story was about the Marco Bridge, which would later be called the Judge S.S. Jolley Bridge. The $2.1 million bridge cut about 14 miles from the 30 mile trip from Naples to Marco, the Eagle reported.

Before the Jolley Bridge, Islanders only had the swing bridge in Goodland as their connection to the mainland, which was replaced in the mid-70s.

The Woodward family arrived on Marco Island shortly after the first edition of the Eagle and just before the Jolley Bridge was built.

“It took forever to get to Naples to go to middle school,” said Craig Woodward, who was 12 years old at the time.

When the bridge opened, Woodward said he went to the ribbon cutting ceremony.

“The best part was that I got to sleep later,” he said of the shorter trip.

Craig’s mom, Glenellen Woodward, said the bridge made her life much easier as well.

“I could go to the grocery story to get food,” she said.

She added that before the Jolley Bridge was open, the only place on Island was 7-Eleven and three island restaurants: the Olde Marco Inn, the Islander and The Lodge in Goodland.

“It was pretty primitive,” said Craig Woodward, 52

The Woodwards were among the first Islanders to receive the Marco Eagle when it was 10 cents and reached 500 of the island’s 700 homes in 1968. Today the paper is about 75 pages, costs 50 cents and is delivered to 5,300 homes and condos or about 61 percent of the households, said Thomas Janning, Eagle’s director of circulation.

Craig and Glenellen still have clippings through the years, including a front page story from December 1969 of Craig winning an award in the Boy Scouts.

“You know where you are when that’s front page news,” he said.

Craig and his twin brother Mark are both second generation attorneys. The Woodwards had the first lawfirm on Marco Island. As twins, they were pretty well known, Craig said.

They graduated from Naples High in 1974, the year before Lely High School opened.

Current Eagle reporter Roger Lalonde compiles a “30 years ago today” column, which Glenellen and Craig said is one of their favorite sections of the newspaper.

Four years ago, the Eagle republished a news segment of the Woodward twins graduating from high school with two other sets of twins graduating the same year.

“My clients came in and said to me ‘congrats on graduating high school,” Craig said.

Glenellen said it’s fun to read because she remembers those headlines and it brings back such memories.

The Woodwards shared another story about the small town news they enjoyed over the 40 years they’ve been on island.

Tony Wetzel was a columnist for the Eagle and tracked the Woodwards several week trip in Spain.

“I’d send (Wetzel) updates of what we were doing and he would rewrite it into a column,” Glenellen said.

The Eagle’s first publisher was Bill Tamplin, who sold the Eagle to The New York Times, Co. on Jan. 1, 1973.

“A reporter came to talk to me and my dad (Arthur Woodward) and introduces himself as being from the NY Times. I say ‘you’re from the Marco Eagle. Give us a break.’ I just thought that was so funny. And it wasn’t a joke,” Craig Woodward said.

Russell Tuff, executive editor of the community publications, dug into purchase orders made in the 1960s and found the process of putting the paper together differed greatly 40 years ago.

“A reporter typed their story on a typewriter then handed it to a typesetter to put the type together as film. That copy was pasted on the page,” Tuff said of the 1968 process.

Just as the Woodward family grew and prospered, so did the Island and its local paper, the Eagle.

“Those mysterious doors, which appeared a few weeks ago in the east wall of the Marco Post Office at 600 Elkcam Circle, are a mystery no longer. They are the public entrance to the new home of the Marco Island Eagle,” the Eagle reported in September 1978 upon moving into its new home.

Marco Island visionaries, the Mackle Brothers — Elliott, Robert, and Frank, Jr. acquired most of Marco Island for $7 million and their company, The Deltona Corporation, developed the Island. The Mackles officially opened modern Marco Island January 31, 1965 shortly before the arrival of the Eagle. However, when serious problems developed for the Mackle Brothers in 1976, Islanders knew about it.

Permits to develop Barfield Bay and Big Key, the final two phases of development, were denied by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as environmentalists engaged in years of litigation, compromise, and public meetings, Deltona would fight the denial all the way to the Supreme Court while teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. In an effort to raise funds for their court battles, the company proceeded to sell many undeveloped properties at bargain basement prices and began selling assets, including its prized possession, the Marco Beach Hotel and Villas, which was sold to the Marriott Corporation in 1979 for $35 million.

In March 1981, the Eagle boasted the grand opening of the “ultra modern” building on Elkcam Circle, where the 10,000 square-foot office still remains, though few would call it “ultra-modern” anymore.

The E.W. Scripps Company purchased the Marco Island Eagle in 2000. Six years later, the Eagle launched marconews.com, allowing Island news to reach well beyond the area’s physical boarders faster than ever before.

In 2008 it seems things do come back around as several of this year’s biggest news stories once again centered around the Island’s bridges and particularly whether to toll the Jolley Bridge.

The Jolley Bridge was once tolled to pay off the bridge’s bonds. The tolls started at $.40 to get on island and free to get off island, Woodward said. Then the toll went down to $.20 cents as the bond for the bridge was getting paid off too fast, Woodward recalled.

One of the first jobs Mark and Craig had in high school was with the Florida Department of Transportation surveying people about the tolls as they crossed the bridge in the 1970s.

Recent surveys show Islanders aren’t pleased with the idea of a toll, but Woodward said it wouldn’t be anything new.

Naples Daily News
Naples Sun Times
The Banner

Collier Citizen
Vista Semanal
PrepZone

Coastalbeat
Set Anchor
SWFLMoms