Myakka River Basin at Snook Haven

Myakka River Basin at Snook Haven, oil on Panel, 11x14 inches

set up

The “Snook’s” first modern-era occupant was a confederacy of smugglers seeking to unload contraband during Prohibition in the late 1920’s and 1930’s. Snook Haven’s location on a remote peninsula along the shores of the Myakka River, upstream from the Gulf of Mexico, made it ideal to land and ship their illegal wares to a thirsty Florida population!

Add a still for some moonshine, and a mule path, and you have the beginnings of Snook Haven’s greatest role as a community watering-hole. Sometime during this period, a location scout for a Hollywood studio (sober or otherwise) stumbled upon Snook Haven. A perfect stateside location for filming exotic jungle movies, Snook Haven became a staging site for film crews shooting a number of movies such as the 1931 French Foreign Legion classic “Prestige”.
In 1987, The State of Florida designated the Myakka as one of only two “Wild and Scenic Rivers” in the state, a federal designation designed to preserve the Myakka River basin in its natural state. Sarasota County purchased the property in 2006 in an effort to further protect this showcase of an earlier era as part of the Parks system. 

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