Sarasota’s Midnight Pass was closed in 1983 by a pair of homeowners who were worried that the migrating waterway, which was undercutting their beachfront homes, would topple them into the Gulf.
It was a time when environmental oversight was, in many ways, in its infancy.
Sarasota County commissioners approved the plan to close Midnight Pass with little to no input from coastal scientists and engineers regarding the potential effects.
That set off 40 years of bickering between those in support of reopening the pass and those saying let it be.
Millions of dollars, both public and private, have been spent on the issue over the last four decades.
Sarasota County even got its hand slapped, spending $1 million to secure permits to reopen the pass, just to be denied.
Time, however, was all it would take.
One year ago, Hurricane Helene breached the large dune between the Gulf and the old Midnight Pass channel. The next month, Hurricane Milton’s surge fully reopened and enlarged Midnight Pass.
Further debate may be useless.
Last week, tidal prism and other tests of the coastal dynamics found that the pass, while still unstable, is showing signs of settling in.
The conclusion: Midnight Pass has a good chance of staying open for the foreseeable future.
“There's no evidence of it closing with the data that's been collected so far,” Dave Tomasko, who leads the Sarasota Bay Estuary Program, said. “Should we be cheering it to be open? I would say yeah, because it was closed by humans. I'm really glad it happened."
The demise of Midnight Pass
The inlet between Siesta and Casey keys off present-day Sarasota first appeared on 1840s charts as “Buccaneers Pass,” reflecting a long history of natural openings in the region.
A hurricane in 1921 reshaped that part of coastal Florida, and a new inlet opened between the same two keys that locals named Midnight Pass.
It was a robust and stable inlet that functioned well, washing in clear water helping to grow seagrass, shellfish, and fisheries in Little Sarasota Bay --until the early 1960s.
That's when the Army Corps of Engineers dredged the Intracoastal Waterway around much of peninsular Florida.
The 9-foot-deep and 100-foot-wide channel cut through oyster beds stretching across bays.
The dredge spoil – mucky, shell-filled dirt -- was deposited into piles alongside the channel -- today’s numerous “spoil islands” common between the mainland and the largely natural outlying barrier islands off both coasts of Central Florida and South Florida.
That much disruption to the natural system – dam-like clam bars cut wide open, a long and deep channel in what was shallow bay bottom, and hundreds of new islands all over the place – affected the circulation in bays and lagoons for hundreds of miles.
The Intracoastal destabilized Midnight Pass, and it migrated north as shoaling accelerated during the next two decades.
By the early 1980s, the two beachfront homeowners – noted artist Syd Solomon and community activist Pasco Carter -- received the commission’s blessing to close it.
A few tractors, a bunch of sand, and Midnight Pass became a destination, not a waterway.
The beach grew into a tall, wide berm. Boaters in Little Sarasota Bay could pull onto the sand, walk over the berm, and spend the day on the rather private beach on the other side.
Sarasota County renamed it Palmer Park, but nobody called it that.
The lack of environmental studies and projections on the impact of the closure on the surrounding ecosystem proved significant for the region’s marine ecology.
Especially after the homeowners tried eight times to reopen the pass a few hundred yards to the south as they promised, but nature wasn’t having it.
Water quality and ecological conditions in Little Sarasota Bay deteriorated due to the lack of regular flushing of the pass, prompting the formation of the Midnight Pass Society and the decades of discontent.
The Gulf ate at Solomon’s former home during the active hurricane season of 2004, when erosion again undermined the structure. That October, with the house leaning over the water, a wrecking crew toppled the structure.
The rebirth of the pass
A coastal engineering company hired by Sarasota County assesses Midnight Pass weekly. Since Hurricane Milton, the pass has retained a steady depth ranging from 11 to 17 feet, depending on the tides, and a width of roughly 200 feet.
Measurements are finding that the pass delivers a substantial daily water flow, providing Little Sarasota Bay with the tidal exchange it had been missing for more than four decades – a heady flow that the homeowners trying to rebuild the pass in the 1980s could never achieve.
The new Midnight Pass still faces challenges.
The ongoing impacts of climate change loom over the pass and Little Sarasota Bay.
As a result of rising water temperatures and atmospheric conditions, the area is likely to experience more frequent and intense tropical storm seasons like last year’s.
The University of South Florida’s Ping Wang, a coastal geologist, said the duality of more storms bringing higher storm surge could lead to flooding in Little Sarasota Bay through the direct Gulf-to-bay waterway.
History, too, portends that Midnight Pass will migrate. Million-dollar homes continue to be built to the north on Siesta Key, and even more expensive enclaves are spread out on Casey Key to the south.
Sarasota County intends to keep Midnight Pass open while monitoring its evolution.
“We think that little Sarasota Bay is going to be back more like what it was in the 80s, before this was open, or before it was closed,” Tomasko, of the estuary program, said. “With the pass open, Little Sarasota Bay is likely to improve its water quality.”
Environmental reporting for WGCU is funded in part by VoLo Foundation, a non-profit with a mission to accelerate change and global impact by supporting science-based climate solutions, enhancing education, and improving health.
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