A town that faced the water
The organizers of the Naples Stone Crab Festival put the city's history plainly: Naples and its neighboring communities were all founded around the waterfront in the 1880s, and until 1915 the only way to get to Naples was by water. That bay side waterfront, around Naples Bay and the Gordon River, is still where much of the seafood eating happens.
Collier County's tourism office calls its stretch of coast, from this city down through Marco and the Ten Thousand Islands, the birthplace of the stone crab business and one of the biggest sources of claws in the nation, with family fish houses and generations of crabbers working the waters south of town.
On the Naples side, the bureau lists Kelly's Fish House on the Gordon River as the city's oldest seafood restaurant, and points to the Tin City waterfront, Swan River Seafood and a string of other kitchens that serve claws in season. The Gulf side has its own pull: the Naples Pier and the beach below Fifth Avenue South and Third Street South, which is where most visitors start.
Cracking the first claw
Stone crab season in Florida opens on October 15, and Naples marks it a week or so later. The Naples Stone Crab Festival, now in its 17th year and sponsored by the Old Naples Waterfront Association, opens on a Friday evening with the traditional cracking of the first claw, then moves through a weekend of seafood, live music and arts and crafts at Tin City and waterfront businesses, with free water taxis between them.
Recreational crabbers can trap their own in season. The daily cap is a single gallon of claws for each person, and a boat never holds more than two. A claw has to measure 2 7/8 inches or longer, each person can work five traps at most, egg bearing females are off limits, and every crab swims away alive.
