Punta Rassa is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Lee County, Florida, United States. The population was 1,620 at the 2020 census, down from 1,750 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Geography
Punta Rassa is located in southwestern Lee County at the west end of a peninsula bordered to the north by the Caloosahatchee River, to the west by San Carlos Bay, and to the south by the Gulf of Mexico. The community sits at the east end of the Sanibel Causeway, which crosses San Carlos Bay to Sanibel Island. McGregor Boulevard (County Road 867) forms the southern edge of the community; the highway leads northeast to Fort Myers, the Lee county seat. Punta Rassa is bordered to the east by the unincorporated community of Iona.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the Punta Rassa CDP has a total area of , of which are land and , or 46.55%, are water.
History
The location was named Punta Rasca (Spanish for "smooth or flat point" and later corrupted to "Punta Rassa") by the 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, along the southwest Florida coast from Tampa Bay to San Carlos Bay. The Spanish Cubans would stay in Florida from September until March drying and salting fish caught along the coast to supply Havana. Native Americans living in the area, possibly Calusa at first, and later Seminole, worked seasonally at the ranchos, staying on in the area during the off-season (see Spanish Indians). Dr. Benjamin Strobel visited a rancho at Punta Rassa in 1833, where he found ten or so wood-framed houses. "Ponte Rasa" was named as a "rancho" in an 1835 letter from William Buner (presumably William Bunce) to Wiley Thompson.
Seminole Wars
During the Second Seminole War, and again between 1855 and 1858 (Billy Bowlegs war), Punta Rassa was in the theater of war during the Seminole Wars. As a result, Fort Dulany (also spelled "Dulaney", "Delany" and "Delaney") was built there after January 1838 as an army supply depot, with a hospital. The fort was abandoned the next year (see the Battle of the Caloosahatchee), and then re-occupied in 1841, when it was used to hold Seminole prisoners before they were sent west to the Indian Territory. A hurricane destroyed Fort Dulany in October 1841. Army operations were moved up the Caloosahatchee River to a site named Fort Harvie. Fort Harvie was abandoned in 1842. After a white trader was killed by Seminoles on the Peace River in 1849 (see Paynes Creek incident), the Army returned to the Caloosahatchee River in 1850. The new Fort Myers was built on the burned ruins of Fort Harvie. Fort Dulany was reopened during the Third Seminole War, in 1856, and then closed again in 1858.
Civil War
Southwest Florida was relatively quiet in the early part of the Civil War. Union troops and refugee Union sympathizers occupied Useppa Island in December 1863 and mounted a small raid into Charlotte Harbor and up the Myakka River, which resulted in some skirmishes with Confederate troops and irregulars. In January 1864, Union troops landed at Punta Rassa and marched overland to Fort Myers, which they were able to seize before Confederate sympathizers could burn it. The troops on Useppa Island then moved to Fort Myers. As the year progressed, Union troops and sympathizers began driving cattle to Punta Rassa to supply Union ships on blockade duty and Union-held Key West, reducing the supply of cattle available to Confederate forces. The increased shipping from Punta Rassa led the Union Army to build a barracks and a wharf there. The barracks was , set on pilings to place the building above storm surges.
Cattle port
thumb|Pre-1906 photo of the "Barracks", also known as the Tarpon House, at Punta Rassa, Florida
Punta Rassa became a thriving cattle shipping town in the later 1800s. The first cattle drive to Punta Rassa had been in 1833, when P. B. Prior purchased ten cattle and some calves from Seminoles living near the Peace River in what is now Hardee County, and drove them to Punta Rassa, possibly for transport to Sanibel Island. Florida cattlemen began shipping cattle to Cuba after the end of the Third Seminole War. Shipments at first were made from Tampa, and then from Fort Ogden and Punta Gorda on the Peace River. Cattle shipments to Cuba were curtailed, but not completely stopped, by the Union blockade of Florida during the Civil War. After the war ended, shipments of cattle from the Peace River ports resumed to Cuba, to Savannah, Georgia, and to Charleston, South Carolina. Some of the cattle shipments to Cuba were made out of Punta Rassa starting in 1869, and by 1872, 18,000 out of a little more than 21,000 cattle shipped from Florida to Cuba went through Punta Rassa.
Most cattle drives in Florida were relatively small and short. Three or four hundred steers would be driven by three to five cowboys for or so from the open range of central Florida to Punta Rassa. A few cattle drives were larger, up to 1,500 cattle moved by ten or so cowboys. The longest drives were , from Fernandina, by the Georgia border, to Punta Rassa. Water was a problem; too much during the wet season, not enough in the dry season. In the dry season, the cowboys might have to rope alligators to pull them out of water holes so that the cattle could safely drink. An FPL transmission line currently sits on a portion of the rail line's former right of way just south of Summerlin Road.
The area figured prominently in the 1984 historical novel A Land Remembered, by Patrick D. Smith.
Demographics
2020 census
As of the 2020 census, Punta Rassa had a population of 1,620. The median age was 80.0 years. 1.5% of residents were under the age of 18 and 89.1% of residents were 65 years of age or older. For every 100 females there were 68.0 males, and for every 100 females age 18 and over there were 67.9 males age 18 and over.
99.7% of residents lived in urban areas, while 0.3% lived in rural areas.
There were 997 households in Punta Rassa, of which 1.4% had children under the age of 18 living in them. Of all households, 44.1% were married-couple households, 14.6% were households with a male householder and no spouse or partner present, and 39.9% were households with a female householder and no spouse or partner present. About 53.8% of all households were made up of individuals and 51.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.