In 1911, the Anna Maria Beach Company built the Anna Maria City Dock, later called the pier, extending 776 feet into Tampa Bay so steamer boats could bring potential buyers to its new real estate development. Formed in 1910, the company was led by George Wilhelm "Will" Bean, who had inherited land homesteaded by his father on the north end of Anna Maria Key, and Charles Roser, a wealthy Ohio cookie maker who had developed the Fig Newton cookie and sold the recipe to the National Biscuit Company for one million dollars. Steamers from Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Manatee River points soon brought tourists and excursionists by the hundreds for swimming, fishing, picknicking, dancing, and outings at Anna Maria Beach, while Bean promoted the resort with postcards, a gift shop, his daughter greeting arrivals from a small boat, and his sister Mary telling fortunes on the dock. The Tampa Board of Trade visited on August 22, 1912, and fishing from the pier became a popular pastime for residents and visitors. In the pier's early years, Capt. Mitch Davis built Lotus Cottage, a large summer home that appeared on the 1913 plat and was used by the Trice family. The resort's fortunes declined in 1915 as war in Europe and worsening national economic conditions hurt investment and sales, Bean fell out with Roser, and in 1917 Roser sued Bean and foreclosed on his mortgage. Ownership of the company's holdings passed through other real estate firms until a 1921 hurricane and the construction of the Cortez Bridge at the island's south end finished off the resort. In 1928, the pier was given to the City of Anna Maria for back taxes, and afterward the city struggled for decades with costly repairs, rotting pilings, periodic closures, and maintenance work that in the 1930s included assistance from the Works Progress Administration.