median income for a family was $125,547. The per capita income for the CDP was $64,731. History Tierra Verde was once 15 islands covered with mangroves, pines and bush. These islands ranged in size from only a few acres to the largest, Cabbage Key, having over . For centuries, Native Americans used the islands for ceremonial and burial grounds. A marker remains on the east side of Pinellas Bayway, just north of East Shore Drive, where Native American relics were found in a typical shell mound, excavated when the road was built to Fort De Soto Park. The islands were sacred ground to Native nations as far back as 500 years ago, archaeologists suggest, and deadly conflicts occurred when outsiders trespassed. Then, the Spanish explorers came. One explorer, Juan Ponce de León, came to the area in 1513, and again in 1521, when he received the wound that he later died from after returning to Cuba. Later, Narvaez and Hernando de Soto explored, and then pirates and buccaneers sailed the area, including José Gaspar, Juan Gomez and Jean Lafitte. A treasure was reputed to have once been buried here. In 1848 Robert E. Lee, then a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. army, recommended that Mullet Key be used for coastal defense in Florida. During the Spanish–American War of 1898, Fort De Soto was built on Mullet Key. Remains of the fort still stand, along with fortifications on Egmont Key. In 1948 the federal government sold Mullet Key to Pinellas County for park and recreation facilities, now Fort De Soto Park. Cabbage Key was documented in 1902 as the location where a particularly large alligator was caught, the specimen being reported as twelve feet long and weighing 431 pounds. Human skeletons were also found on the island at one time, although early searches found no pottery. A dredging project in 1913 filled in low-lying areas of the island, and in December of that year the island was sold by owner Will Dent to "[a] syndicate composed of H.E. Dickens, E. Durant and others" for around $50,000. Early settlers to the area included Baltimore sea captain William Bunce and Silas Dent, who with his brother had a dairy farm. Dent lived on Cabbage Key until he died there in 1952. The Roberts family was among the early settlers of Pass-a-Grille and Tierra Verde. George "Florida" Roberts was a fishing guide for figures