Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Punta Rassa, FL

Punta Rassa is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Lee County, Florida, sitting at the east end of the Sanibel Causeway, where the bridge crosses San Carlos Bay to Sanibel Island.

The location was named 'Punta Rasca' - Spanish for 'smooth or flat point', later corrupted to Punta Rassa - by Spanish conquistadors in the mid-16th century, who unloaded cattle in the area.

By the middle of the 18th century, fishermen from Cuba had established permanent fishing stations called ranchos at Punta Rassa, drying and salting fish along the coast to supply Havana.

Fort Dulany was built at Punta Rassa in 1838 as an Army supply depot during the Second Seminole War, was destroyed by a hurricane in October 1841, and was reopened during the Third Seminole War in 1856.

In 1867 the International Ocean Telegraph Company laid an undersea telegraph cable from Havana through Key West to Punta Rassa, and the line opened to public use on September 11, 1867, linking Florida directly to Cuba.

Punta Rassa became a thriving cattle-shipping port in the later 1800s - by 1872, some 18,000 of the slightly more than 21,000 cattle shipped from Florida to Cuba went through Punta Rassa.

Punta Rassa was one of the home bases of Jake Summerlin, the 'King of the Cracker Cowboys', who built the Summerlin House hotel there in 1874 and bought up the cattle pens and wharf in 1878.

In the 1880s Punta Rassa became famous as a sport-fishing destination for wealthy anglers chasing the prized tarpon, before visitors shifted north to Boca Grande once the railroad reached it.

Punta Rassa had a population of 1,620 at the 2020 census spread across 997 households - and it is one of the oldest communities in America by age, with a median age of 80.0 years and 89.1% of residents aged 65 or older.

Nearly half of Punta Rassa is water - of its 4.5 square miles, about 46.6% is water, as it sits on a peninsula bordered by the Caloosahatchee River, San Carlos Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.