Recreation

Island life centered on family and community, with pastimes such as beach walks, shell collecting, sport fishing, and recreational baseball. Sanibel's Tomato Pickers baseball team won the championship of the Caloosahatchee Valley league in 1910, and baseball games were often held after community fish fries that were important social gatherings for local residents. Potluck dinners, often prepared over wood-burning or kerosene stoves, included wild bird and turtle stews, citrus fruits, home-grown vegetables, fish, clams, and oysters, and sometimes rum acquired from visiting Cuban fishermen was served. Weddings and school graduations drew nearly everyone on the island. Holidays also brought annual traditions, including Thanksgiving song and dance recitals at the Sanibel School, decorated with home grown produce, Christmas programs at the Sanibel Community House in December, an annual community Thanksgiving celebration there in recent years, and, beginning in 1984, the island-wide Luminary Festival during the holiday season.

Sanibel, Florida · United States