Golden Gate Estates Home with Three Acres

Naples Rural Homes and Areas

The largest community in the Naples area is rural – Golden Gate Estates. While Naples estate home communities have homes on an acre or more, nearly every home in Golden Gate Estates (GGE) is on an acre or more.

The blue area on this map shows the sections in Naples covered by GGE. The area outline in black represents where all of Naples other developments and communities are located. Outside the blue area, and the black outlined area would be small pockets of rural homes, but they are only a small percentage of Naples rural homes, and are not part of any community.

There are no large tracks of vacant land left remaining within the black outline, For the Naples area, options available for major new development would be east of the Blue Section or the far reaches of the very southeast portion of this map

Golden Gate Estates - Blue Area

Western vs SE Sections of GGE

Golden Gate Estates (GGE)

“If you believe that, I have some swampland in Florida to sale you” That old phrase was about GGE. In the 1960s a developer drained the swamp lands east of Naples, though a series of canals, subdivided the land into acre lots and built a series of limestone roads through the area. This subdivision and its network of canals and roads extended south into the area market Preserve on the map above, but has since been reclaimed, and converted back to wetlands.

Lot sales were promoted on National TV as a vacation and retirement community. Most lots were sold by the mid 1960s. But by the 1970s very little of the area was developed. At that time the county took over road maintenance, and restricted future home building to lots of 2 acres or more, as with no central sewer or water, the vast number of one acre lots could not be supported.

Today, the main GGE area, east of Collier Boulevard, has nearly 24,000 parcels, with less than 50% with structures. This map shows for example, how the furthest western parcels have mostly been developed, and how the furthest eastern sections are mostly undeveloped.

Lots can range in price to under $10,000 an acre to over $100,000 an acre depending how far west or east it is, and whether the parcel is mostly wetlands or dry-lands.