Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Captiva Captiva, FL

Captiva is an unincorporated community and census-designated place that covers the whole of Captiva Island in Lee County, Florida, between the Gulf of Mexico and Pine Island Sound.

Captiva had a population of 318 at the 2020 census, down sharply from 583 in 2010, and it is part of the Cape Coral-Fort Myers metropolitan area.

According to local folklore, Captiva got its name because the pirate captain Jose Gaspar supposedly held his female captives on the island for ransom, though the story may have come from an early developer's advertising brochure.

Captiva was homesteaded in 1888 by William Herbert Binder, an Austrian who had washed ashore after a shipwreck and became the island's first and only modern-era resident for a decade; his grave sits in the tiny cemetery beside the Chapel by the Sea.

Captiva was originally part of Sanibel Island until a 1926 hurricane's storm surge carved out Blind Pass between them, and a 1921 hurricane had already split off North Captiva Island by creating Redfish Pass.

The only automobile access to Captiva is across the Sanibel Causeway and over the small Blind Pass bridge from Sanibel Island, about 31 miles by road from downtown Fort Myers.

Many of Captiva's homes and businesses were destroyed by Hurricane Charley in 2004, and Hurricane Ian in September 2022 badly damaged the Sanibel Causeway and the island's infrastructure.

Travel, tourism, and hospitality are the number one industry on Captiva, and the 330-acre South Seas Island Resort occupies the northern two miles of the island.

Captiva's quirky Bubble Room restaurant, built in 1979 by the Farquharson family, is decorated with toys from the 1930s and 1940s and helped popularize the island's bright pastel colors.

Famous Captiva visitors have included Theodore Roosevelt, who fished the channel on the island's east side that now bears his name, and Charles Lindbergh, who regularly landed his plane on the beach in front of the 'Tween Waters Inn.