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Location Information:
Sarasota is a city located in
Sarasota County on the south western
coast of the state of Florida in the
United States. Its current official
limits include Sarasota Bay and
several barrier islands between the
bay and the Gulf of Mexico.
These
islands separating Sarasota Bay from
the gulf near the city, known as
keys, include Lido Key and Siesta
Key, which are famous worldwide for
the quality of their sandy beaches.
Today
the keys that are included in the
boundary of Sarasota are Lido Key,
St. Armands Key, Otter Key, Coon
Key, Bird Key, and portions of
Siesta Key. Previously, Siesta Key
was named Sarasota Key. At one time,
it and all of Longboat Key were
considered part of Sarasota and
confusing contemporaneous references
may be found discussing them.
Longboat Key is the largest key
separating the bay from the gulf,
but it is now evenly divided by the
new county line of 1921. Most of the
portion of the key that parallels
the Sarasota city boundary (at that
county line) along the bay front of
the mainland was removed from the
city boundaries at the request of
John Ringling in the mid-1920s, to
avoid taxation of his new
developments at the southern tip of
the key.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau,
Sarasota had a population of 52,488
in 2007. In 1986 it became
designated as a certified local
government. Sarasota is a principal
city of the
Bradenton-Sarasota-Venice, Florida
Metropolitan Statistical Area, and
is the seat of Sarasota County.
It is
among the communities included in a
two-county federally-mandated
Metropolitan Planning Organization
that includes all of Sarasota and
Manatee counties and the chairs of
the three elements of that
organization belong to the
eight-county regional planning
organization for western central
Florida
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