“Discovery” of unknown city of 5,471 people stuns Sarasota officials
When the 1960 census showed the town of Hayden, just south of Sarasota, with thousands of residents it stumped city officials.
At a meeting in May 1961, Sarasota City Planning Department director R.W. Pavitt raised a surprising concern. Apparently, there was a town just south of the Sarasota city limits with a whopping 5,471 residents! At least that’s what the United Status Census of 1960 reported. The problem was no one at the city office had ever heard of such a place.
It wasn’t the only new city that the federal government had gifted to county residents that year. They also inserted the previously unknown burg of Sunnyland, somewhere between Fruitland and Bee Ridge. Queries to Washington indicated that they often needed to find names to cover unincorporated areas; those two seemed suitable enough.
A couple of weeks later one of Sarasota’s original settlers, A.B. Edwards, came forward to help solve the mystery. Having lived in the city since 1888 he recalled that there was, in fact, once a settlement called Hayden. However, it was not located where the bureaucrats had placed it. It seems they conveniently moved it about 1.5 miles southeast (near Trader Joes on Tamiami Trail today) to suit…
