Bokeelia occupies the northern tip of Pine Island with water on three sides, and the Census classes it as one hundred per cent rural. Around eighteen hundred people live here, nearly four in ten of them sixty-five or older, and close to four in ten homes are vacant for much of the year.
It is the far end of a sixteen-mile island reached by a single bridge, which shapes everything about how work gets done. It is also a working place, with fishing, palm nurseries and old Florida stock rather than resort development. The roofs reflect that.