and a number of shops, offices and a restaurant now occupy the old building. The railroad continued to run work trains to the south end until the phosphate port closed in 1979. The rail line between Arcadia and Boca Grande was abandoned in 1981. Thanks to the generosity of Bayard and Hugh Sharp (members of the Du Pont family who had been winter residents for many years), the community purchased the old railroad bed from CSX Corp. (the successor corporation to the old Chessie and Seaboard systems) and transformed it into a new use—Boca Grande's popular Bike Path. Boca Grande has always been a unique community, with a large number of wealthy winter residents rubbing elbows with the fishermen and railroad and port workers who formed the permanent, year-round working population. Fishing The Boca Grande Pass is considered one of the world's best tarpon fishing spots. Tarpon congregate and spawn out of passes along most of the entire rim of the Gulf of Mexico. The massive attraction to Boca Grande Pass is unknown and subject to many theories. In the spring, it appears that many of the fish's habits all along the coast are in orientation to Boca Grande Pass. With depths reaching near , it is the deepest natural pass in Florida. It is the only major outlet of Charlotte Harbor, which is fed by two major rivers, the Peace and the Myakka. As the bottleneck of the harbor, the currents are strong and serve as an underwater highway for many species of fish and bait. Harpooning tarpon is documented back to the late 1700s by British settlers. There is some debate among historians on who caught the first tarpon on rod and reel in Florida. The fish gained fame from an 1885 story published in the magazine Forest and Stream. The article detailed an event that took place on March 12, 1885, when a New Yorker named W.H. Wood landed a 93-pound tarpon at the mouth of the Caloosahatchee River. While it may have not been the first tarpon caught on rod and reel, the fish's capture generated much publicity and is at least credited as exposing tarpon fishing to the world. Soon after, tarpon were given a game fish status to protect them from harpoons (known as "striking" or "graining") and nets that were common methods of taking tarpon. In the late 1890s, a then-modern railway system