Port Charlotte (Images of America)

From John Murdock to Arthur Frizzell to the General Development Corporation, Port Charlotte has a colorful history of progression. Large landholders sold property in this unknown paradise to working-class people. In the 1950s, General Development Corporation created Port Charlotte by expanding the canals previously dug by John Murdock to drain the swampy land. The Mackle Company carved Arthur Frizzell's 80,000 acres into small, perfectly rectangular lots for resale to middle-class retirees, who were the targets of mass advertising and sales practices that included displaying models of Port Charlotte in department stores throughout Chicago and New York. Encouraging retirees to come to Port Charlotte resulted in the area having one of the highest concentrations of residents aged 65 and older in the nation. Port Charlotte's boom-and-bust history is a microcosm of the frenzied social and economic growth that occurred in Florida in the second half of the 20th century.