Centuries before Columbus landed in the New World, Florida's lower Gulf coast was controlled by the Calusa Indians. A complex and powerful people, the Calusa built huge mounds of shell and earth for their religious temples and public buildings. Highly skilled Calusa artisans also created elaborate masks and wood carvings for religious and ceremonial purposes, such as those discovered by Frank Hamilton Cushing on Marco Island in 1895.

Throughout the 1700s, small bands of Creek Indians from Georgia and Alabama joined with escaped black slaves and other displaced Indians to forge a new identity in Florida known as the Seminole.

From 1835 to 1842 vastly outnumbered Seminole war parties fought the U.S. Army to a stalemate in the longest, bloodiest and most expensive Indian war in U.S. history. A chain of forts along the fringes of Collier County were reactivated when a third and final fight with the Seminole broke out in 1855. The few surviving Seminole found refuge deep in the Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp where they developed a culture uniquely suited to the climate and terrain of south Florida.

Southwest Florida remained virtually uninhabited until after the Civil War when handfuls of farmers and squatters began making their way south in mule wagons, ox carts, or sailboats. Early pioneers fished and hunted for a living; raised crops of cabbage, sugar cane, tomatoes and pineapples; dug clams, made charcoal, sold bird plumes, and trapped otters and alligators for their pelts and hides.

Trading posts started by Ted Smallwood on Chokoloskee Island and George Storter at Everglade became important gathering places for the few isolated settlers and Indians. By the late 1880s, Naples and Marco Island were already gaining popularity as winter resorts for wealthy Northerners and sportsmen.

Cattle ranching is one of Collier County's oldest industries. By the early 1900s, ranchers were grazing herds of scrub cattle on the open rangeland around Immokalee and Corkscrew Settlement. Railroads gradually improved the ranchers access to market in the 1920s and helped raise the County's beef cattle industry to national importance by the end of World War II.

Unlike cowboys on the western frontier, South Florida "cowmen" used braided leather whips and small catch-dogs to herd and handle their fast-running cows. Today, cattle ranching is still a vital part of the County's economy with over 10,000 head of beef cattle and 44 working ranches in operation.

Collier County's creation in 1923 and its early economic growth were closely tied to Memphis-born millionaire, Barron Gift Collier. With his fortune from streetcar advertising, Collier introduced paved roads, electric power, telegraphs, and countless new modern services and improvements to Florida's last frontier.

Barron Collier's completion of the Tamiami Trail in 1928 also unlocked the region's enormous agricultural and resort potential. Florida's first commercial oil well was brought in at Sunniland in 1943, and Collier County's cypress logging industry flourished at Copeland well into the 1950s.

World War II introduced hundreds of servicemen to Naples and Collier County when the U.S. Army Air Field (now Naples Airport) was built in 1943 to train pilots for air-to-air combat over Europe and the Pacific. At the height of the war, several hundred men and 75 aircraft were assigned to the Naples base. A smaller airstrip was also established at Immokalee in 1942 for emergency landings.

Many veterans returned after the war to live here permanently and to start new businesses. A direct hit by Hurricane Donna in 1960 actually stimulated Naples' growth with an infusion of insurance money and loans.

In the short space of a single generation, Collier County has passed from a sparsely settled frontier to the 19th most populous county in the state. The number of County residents swelled from 6,488 in 1950 to over 85,000 by 1980. The County seat was transferred from Everglades City to East Naples in 1962 and signalled a new era of sustained growth in agriculture, tourism, and real estate that have made Collier County one of the fastest developing areas in the nation.