In 1895, the Matthews Hotel (known as the Island Inn today) opened as a small rooming house operated by Hallie Matthews. By 1896, The Sisters Hotel had grown to three buildings and during that time there were only 2 hotels The Matthews & The Sisters Hotel and 1 church on Sanibel.  

The Sears family was one of the most frequent visitors to the Matthews Hotel. They would take a train down to Punta Rassa, then a steamboat to Sanibel, followed by a horse-drawn wagon across the Island prairie to the Matthews Hotel. Several generations of the Sears family visited and eventually lived on Sanibel. When the Matthews changed their name to the Island Inn in 1936, the Sears Family continued to call it the Matthews.

Jane Matthews built a wharf on the Island and homesteaded 160 acres all by herself. Jane didn’t cook and paid to share most of her meals with Hallie Matthews (they were not related). The Matthews Wharf remained busy until it was blown away by the 1926 hurricane.

The very first Shell Fair occurred in 1928 on the front porch of The Matthews Hotel. It became quite competition between the Winter residents staying in the only two hotels on Sanibel. Hotel guests displayed the amazing collections of shells they found during their seasonal stays. The following year the Community Fair was held at The Sisters Hotel and attracted the attention of many off-island visitors including Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. The event became more like a Fair with displays of needlework including knitting, embroidery, tatting (the art of tying knots to make lace) and of course a bake sale.

Some accounts of history claim that the Shell Fair popularity prompted the building of the Sanibel Community House on Periwinkle Way, but the dates don't align here. The Community House was built in 1927 and the Shell Fair was held at the Matthews Hotel in 1928 and at The Sisters Hotel (now Casa Ybel Resort) in 1929. Regardless of the timeline, the Shell Fair moved to the Community House and continues there today.

Sanibel's sea shells were used in a truck bed display on the Punta Rassa side of the Kinzie Brothers Ferry Line to entice folks to explore Sanibel.

Thanks to David E. Carter for digitizing images into the Sanibel Public Library's Pfeifer Vintage Photo Collection. It was a community effort to bring many of these images to Pfeifer Realty Group to be scanned and returned to the families. Thanks also to DigitalFGCU, Florida Gulf Coast University Library.