What's happened to Country Club Shores is even more "unbelievable," Rogers says. "The most nondescript house [on Gulf of Mexico Drive] that was worth $50,000 in the 1970s is selling for $500,000 to $800,000; one went for $2 million. And the end lots on the bay-$4 to $5 million."

Rogers, who celebrated her 30th year of selling Longboat Key real estate in 2004, discovered the island in the 1960s as a vacationer at The Colony, "back when it was cottages with little screened-in porches, when Herb Field [an early island developer whose Buccaneer Inn on Dream Island Road was beloved by children, who could pick a prize from an overflowing treasure chest when they finished their meal] owned it," she remembers. A warm and energetic woman, she's one of Michael Saunders & Company's top producers, a member of an informal club of realtors who sold more than $30 million worth of Longboat real estate in 2003. ("But don't print that," she says. "It was much, much more.")

"In the old days, it was mostly Midwestern and only retirees," Rogers remembers. "Now a lot of younger people are coming in-young retirees and even people with children. It's a lot more interesting." Rogers stops to take a call from a Baltimore client, a businessman with a young family who plans to fly in the next morning and spend the day previewing potential second homes. Rogers' only dilemma: He wants something in the $700,000 range, and she's only found 11 listings on the island she can show him.

In the mid-1920s, John Ringling had big plans for bringing tourism to Longboat. He spent a fortune building a Ritz-Carlton on the island's southern tip, where the Chart House now stands. The Florida real estate bust and stock market crash of 1929, however, put an end to his dreams; the half-finished shell deteriorated for decades and was finally demolished in 1964.

Today, the island's tourism industry faces new adversity in the razing of hotel properties, large and small, to make way for high-end condominiums.

Shop and restaurant owners are nervously eyeing the closure last year of the 146-room Holiday Inn and the 50-room Silver Beach Resort, both on the Manatee County side of Longboat. The smaller, six-unit Starfish Motel also sold, but it remains open through the season; demolition is scheduled for this spring. The 25-room Holiday Beach resort was sold, but the new owners are denying rumors that it's coming down. (A look at the sale price explains why hotel owners might decide to sell out: The mom-and-pop resort was purchased in 1970 for $700,000; its owners sold it last July for $11.8 million.) And last fall, rumors swirled that the 14-unit Sea Bird Beach Resort would imminently close.

"We're definitely concerned," says Susan Estler, marketing director for the Bradenton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. "Over the course of time, [the loss of these hotels] brings less people to the area, and that makes our job harder to promote the properties that are left." Let's face it, she says, the million-dollar-plus condos replacing these hotels "won't go into the rental pool."

Virginia Haley, executive director of the Sarasota Convention and Visitors Bureau, is also worried. "When you lose the hotel rooms, it's harder for places like restaurants and shops to stay open. And staying in a hotel is the most common way people are introduced to the area," she says. "Then the next time they come they say, 'Oh, we want to stay longer,' or 'we're maybe interested in relocating.'"

Historically, Longboat Key properties have drawn a large number of tourists to the area, accounting for about 15 percent of Sarasota County's bed tax, says Haley. "Remember that Longboat is split between the two counties," she says. "For us, the Longboat market has been the Resort at Longboat Key Club, the Colony, and the one- to six-month condo rentals. In Manatee County, it was the Holiday Inn and Hilton, and a lot of mom-and-pops."

Regardless of what side of the county line they choose, "the Longboat visitor is the most-wanted visitor," says Haley. "They spend a lot of money-and luxury travel is back big-time." They are older, more educated and wealthier than Sarasota County tourists as a whole, recent SCVB focus groups reveal. "They have the highest income of all our visitors in general," she says. How high? "We made a mistake and didn't ask high enough; we only asked to $125,000 or more, and the majority said more," Haley says. Interestingly, when the SCVB surveyed interests, Haley says, Longboat visitors were the only group who expressed an interest in attending the performing arts while on vacation.