History
Anna Maria Island was discovered by local Indian tribes the Timucan and Caloosan American Indian tribes and then by Spanish explorers (including Hernando DeSoto) in the name of the Spanish Crown. Hernando de Soto and his crew entered the mouth of Tampa Bay north of Anna Maria in May, 1539, but passed it by to make their landfall on the mainland.
In 1892 George Emerson Bean became the first permanent resident on the Island and homesteaded much of what is now the City of Anna Maria. After Bean's death in 1898, the land went to his son, George Wilhelm Bean, who partnered with Charles Roser, a wealthy real estate developer from St. Petersburg, to form the Anna Maria Beach Company to develop the area. The company laid out streets, built sidewalks and houses and installed a water system.
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—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
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—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)