A post office was established on July 3, 1888, to serve the pioneer community of Horse and Chaise, begun in 1868 by Jesse and Caroline Varn Knight on high ground east of Dona Bay near Shake It Creek. It was named Venice in Darwin O. Curry's application to the U.S. Postmaster General, and Curry, the Knights' son-in-law, operated it from his home near the original Knight homestead. Mail was carted twice weekly over the sandy public road from the Manatee River to Sarasota, Osprey, and Venice. Alfred F. Wrede, postmaster in 1901, ran the post office from a warehouse south of Curry Creek. In 1912, Postmaster William O. Harrison moved it to a site near the railroad in present-day Nokomis. By 1916, the service had moved several miles south, and Walter Surls became postmaster in a building erected by Mrs. Potter Palmer at the present-day intersection of Tampa and Saint Augustine streets in Venice at the terminus of the Seaboard Air Line Railway, completed in 1911. Post offices were also established at Laurel in 1903 by Wilson E. Stephens and at Nokomis in 1916 by Alfred F. Wade.