Barron Gift Collier

Barron Gift Collier was a self-made advertising millionaire in New York City by way of Memphis.

In 1911 he visited southwest Florida and fell in love with it.  

In 1923 a road-building project from Tampa to Miami (the Tamiami Trail) was stalled.  Collier proposed to the State of Florida that if they carved off a southwestern-most county where he owned thousands of acres of land and named it for him -- Collier County, home of Naples and Marco Island -- he would finance and oversee the completion of the Tamiami Trail.
Five years later, in 1928, the Tamiami Trail opened.

This bust of Collier and a display about his accomplishments are in one of the Collier County Museums, the Museum of the Everglades in Everglades City.