The Vanished Town at Mile Zero of Rotonda West's Bike Trail

Head out from Rotonda West toward the Cape Haze Pioneer Trail and you will cross Rotonda Boulevard East a little over two miles in, the trail's one major road crossing on the whole 8.5-mile stretch between western Port Charlotte and Placida. Most riders barely slow down. Fewer still notice that the marker back at the trail's northern start, the one everyone treats as a photo op before the real ride begins, is standing on the site of a town that no longer exists.

That town was called McCall. It had a name, a depot, and a working economy for a few decades, and then it didn't. Understanding what happened to it, and what's happening to the one piece of it still standing today, changes how the whole ride reads.

The Town That Lasted Long Enough to Get a Name

McCall got its start in 1905, when the Charlotte Harbor and Northern Railway built a depot on the Cape Haze peninsula and named the stop after the railroad's general freight and passenger agent. The railway itself ran from 1907 to 1981, hauling phosphate down from the mines near Mulberry along a route that eventually reached the ore-loading dock at Boca Grande, along with livestock and crops like watermelons headed for waiting steamships. For a working railroad town in early-1900s Florida, that's a real run. Then the line shut down, the depot disappeared, and McCall became one of those Florida places that exists mostly on historical markers.

Charlotte County took ownership of the abandoned right-of-way in 1985, and what used to be McCall is now Cape Haze Pioneer Trail Park, the trail's mile zero. The county's own park page credits the trail's creation to Ann Mercer, and the northern trailhead carries her name along with her husband Dr. Robert D. Mercer's.

The One Piece of McCall Still Standing

Somewhere along the way, a wood-frame bunkhouse that once housed railroad workers along Coral Creek was moved to the park site, where it sits as the last surviving structure from the Charlotte Harbor and Northern Railway anywhere in the county. It's been waiting on restoration for years.

Here's what most people riding past it don't know: that bunkhouse is currently tangled up in hurricane paperwork. Charlotte County lists Cape Haze Pioneer Trail Park among its active disaster recovery projects, and the damage description on that project page is specific. It cites water intrusion staining ceiling tiles in a telco communication room, a sleeping area, and a shower and laundry room, along with roof damage feeding the leaks. The county doesn't name the building in that listing, but the park has exactly one structure with a sleeping area and a shower and laundry room, and it isn't the public restrooms at the trailhead. It's the bunkhouse.

So the last physical remnant of a 1905 railroad town, the one artifact tying the trail's paved surface back to an actual place that existed, is sitting in a hurricane recovery queue behind bigger-ticket damage elsewhere in the county. That's not a knock on anyone's priorities. Beachfront parks with collapsed pavilions and washed-out boat ramps are going to get funded first. It just means the thing worth stopping for at mile zero is quietly waiting its turn.

Why the Trail You Ride Isn't the Original Railroad

The Pioneer Trail wasn't built in one shot, and the gaps in that timeline explain a strange kink in the route. The first section opened in 1999, running from the Mercer trailhead down to Rotonda Boulevard. It was extended in 2005 across Coral Creek to reach the Coral Creek Golf Club. The final leg, connecting the golf club down to Placida, wasn't finished until 2010.

That last stretch is where the trail stops following the original railroad. The plan had always been to keep the trail on the historic rail corridor all the way to Placida, but by the time that section was ready to build, the Coral Creek Country Club had already been developed on top of part of the old right-of-way. Rather than route through a golf course, the county built the final miles alongside County Road 771 instead, including a new bicycle-and-pedestrian bridge over Coral Creek to carry the detour.

In short:

• 1999: Mercer trailhead to Rotonda Boulevard, on the original rail bed
• 2005: extended over Coral Creek to Coral Creek Golf Club, still on the rail bed
• 2010: Coral Creek Golf Club to Placida, rerouted alongside CR 771 because the golf course had absorbed the historic corridor

If a ride feels different in character on that southern leg, running closer to the road than to the mangroves, that's why. You're not on the railroad anymore. You're on a workaround for it.

The Mile That Actually Belongs to Rotonda West

Most descriptions of this trail lead with the Mercer trailhead, the flush restrooms, the parking, the historical markers at mile zero. That's the north end, and it's the entry point for someone coming from Port Charlotte. It is not the part of the trail that runs through Rotonda West.

The mile that does is the Rotonda Boulevard East crossing, at roughly the 2.3-mile mark. Riders coming from the north pass through a short stretch of oak cover just before it, one of the only shaded sections along the entire 8.5 miles, and then hit the trail's single major road crossing right at Rotonda's own front door. If you live in Rotonda West and use this trail regularly, that crossing, not the ribbon-cutting site up north, is the part of the route that's actually yours.

What Else Is Along the Corridor

The rest of the ride has its own landmarks. Amberjack Environmental Park, inside Rotonda, blends scrub and mangrove habitat on some of the higher ground along the peninsula. Farther north, Tippecanoe Environmental Park covers 380 acres of uplands and wetlands, with Tippecanoe II set aside specifically for gopher tortoise and Florida scrub-jay habitat. Near the southern end, the trail passes the entrance to Don Pedro Island State Park before terminating just north of the Boca Grande Causeway.

That's also where the trail's next chapter is supposed to begin. There are plans to extend the Pioneer Trail south across the causeway to connect with the Boca Grande Bike Path on Gasparilla Island, which follows the same old railroad corridor onto the island itself. If that connection happens, the ghost of the Charlotte Harbor and Northern Railway will run, uninterrupted, from a vanished mainland town all the way to the water it was originally built to reach.

Shade is thin for most of the ride, with that one oak-covered stretch near Rotonda Boulevard East the exception rather than the rule, so an early start matters more than it sounds like it should once afternoon storms become a daily fixture rather than a possibility. It's also worth keeping the county-run Pioneer Trail separate in your head from Rotonda West's own internal canal-side walking paths. Those are community-maintained, not county property, and they're a different system entirely.

None of this changes what the trail is for most people who use it: a flat, paved way to get exercise without dealing with traffic. But the next time that mile zero marker goes by in a blur, it's worth remembering it's not marking scenery. It's marking a town.

If you're already riding this trail as part of your week in Rotonda West and want to talk about anything else going on in the neighborhood, from what's happening along the corridor to what's next for the area, Olivia Jones is always glad to compare notes.