The following article was published in the March 2015 edition of The Beacon

For most people, naming their municipal address should be a very simple question to answer.  As a relatively new owner in the Marina I initially assumed that we lived in Punta Gorda.  I soon began to wonder though, which city do we really live in and why do we have the mailing address we do?  Old timers will have naturally assimilated the answers to these questions so I offer the results of my research primarily for those newer residents facing the same confusion I initially encountered.

It would be fair to assume that we reside in the City of Punta Gorda, as this is an essential part of our mailing address and an integral element of the name of our homeowners association.  Not so!  The municipal outline of Punta Gorda is a very convoluted one which has a southern boundary approximately seven miles north of us at the Burnt Store Presbyterian Church on the east side of Burnt Store Road.  It also extends a little further south to include some of the green belt on the west side of the road.  The City of Punta Gorda is located entirely within Charlotte County, and is the county seat and only incorporated municipality in Charlotte.  For those curious about the meaning of the name Punta Gorda, I’ve read various interpretations which include the concept of a fat, broad or important point.

Why then do all of our street addresses reference Punta Gorda if we don’t live there?  The short answer to that question is that mailing addresses are set by the United States Postal Service and in many instances, particularly in newly developed areas, no longer correspond with municipal boundaries.   ZIP code 33955, associated with the Punta Gorda post office, ends at Yucca Pen Creek just south of BSM.

If not Punta Gorda, which town do we live we in?  The answer is none, unless you live in The Resorts or Vista del Sol.  Most of Burnt Store Marina is in “unincorporated Lee County”.  What then of the Vista Del Sol and The Resorts residents?  The current northern border of the City of Cape Coral follows the rear property line of the homes on the south side of Charlee Road and extends west along the south side of the right branch of Matecumbe Key Road across from the Rudder Club and the Marina.  The Resorts and Vista del Sol are therefore part of the City of Cape Coral even though their postal address is, like the rest of us, Punta Gorda 33955.  This area was voluntarily annexed to the City of Cape Coral at the specific request of the developer Punta Gorda Isles, Inc.  The previous City border had been 830 feet further south.  The minutes of a city council meeting on December 5, 1983 indicate that PGI, Inc. was requesting the annexation to combine this unincorporated 157 acres of land with an additional 650 acres of land south of it for the purpose of a development consisting of 5,095 multi-family dwellings around a 27 hole championship golf course which was never built.  Next time we will look closer at the county line which we straddle.