Perhaps the only American county ever named for a real estate developer (streetcar advertising mogul Baron Gift Collier), Collier was created from the southern portion of Lee County in 1923.  The original county seat was located at Everglade (now Everglades City), a fishing village in the Ten Thousand Islands region. 

The original courthouse at Everglades City, with some enlargements and modifications, remained in use until 1962 and later served for a time as the city hall.   Most of the town’s public buildings were constructed by the Collier company at the time of the county’s creation.  The first meeting of the board of commissioners actually took place at the Rod and Gun Club, an historic riverside hotel that still stands today.   Subsequent meetings and sessions of court were conducted at the Manhattan Mercantile Building, then in the Bank of Everglades, until construction of an official facility in 1928.

Although some fancifully predicted that Everglades would develop into a Gulf Coast Miami, many residents found their isolated county seat inconvenient.  Professor Charlton Tebeau, in his history of Collier County, relates, “To a casual observer it might have appeared doubtful that a town of any consequence could ever develop there.”   Eventually, in 1962, a new courthouse was constructed at East Naples in order to be closer to the county’s center of population.