The area that is now Venice was originally the home of
Paleo-Indians, with evidence of their presence dating back to 8200 BCE. As thousands of years passed, and the climate changed and some of the Pleistocene animals that the Indians hunted became extinct, the descendants of the Paleo-Indians found new ways to create stone and bone weapons to cope with their changing environment. These descendants became known as the
Archaic peoples. Evidence of their camps along with stone tools were discovered in parts of Venice. Over several millennia the culture and people who lived in the area changed. The peoples who the Spanish encountered when they arrived in 1500s were
mound-builders. Venice lay in a boundary area between two cultures, the
Tocobaga and the
Calusa, and thus evidence of each can be found in the area. The 1870s is when the area saw the first significant wave of white settlers. Francis H. "Frank" Higel, originally from France, arrived in Venice in 1883 with his wife and six sons. He purchased land in the Roberts' homestead for $2,500, , to set up his own homestead. Higel established a citrus operation involving the production of several lines of canned citrus items, such as jams, pickled orange peel, lemon juice, and orange wine. Higel established a post office in 1885 with the name Eyry as a service for the community's thirty residents. In February he was appointed as
postmaster but the office was shut down months later, in November 1885, with services moving back to
Osprey. In 1888, another post office was established, this time with the name "Venice", a name Higel himself suggested because of its likeness to the
canal city in Italy. During the
Florida land boom of the 1920s,
Fred H. Albee, an orthopedic surgeon renowned for his bone-grafting operations, bought from
Bertha Palmer to develop Venice. In 1926, a fire department was formed with thirty-two volunteers. In that same year, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers purchased a new
American LaFrance fire engine from
Moore Haven that had been damaged in the
Great Miami Hurricane. The first library was also founded in 1926 by the Venice-Nokomis Women's Club. This "library" was a few books on a shelf in a local store. The library had several temporary homes until 1965 when the Venice Area Public Library was built. This building remained in use until it was demolished in 2017 due to mold. A new library was constructed in 2018 called the William H. Jervey Jr. Venice Library, named after a benefactor of the new building. On July 1, 1926, it was officially incorporated as the "Town of Venice", and on May 9, 1927, amended its Charter to change its name to the "City of Venice". On October 9, 2024,
Hurricane Milton made landfall just north of Venice, near
Siesta Key, where Venice was near the ground zero of the hurricane's worst storm surge and high winds. Milton came less than two weeks after
Hurricane Helene caused several feet of storm surge throughout the city of Venice. ==Geography==