Old Miakka’s 103-year-old schoolhouse is a vestige of East County’s pioneering past. Two former pupils walk us down that dirt path.
If you head south on Verna Road, past a yawning canopy of mossy oak trees, past the dead-end of Fruitville, you’ll find yourself at the Old Miakka Schoolhouse.
This white clapboard building with its craggy screened porch, freshly burnished bell and rusty seesaw might stick out in other communities. But nestled among the pines in sleepy Old Miakka it makes perfect sense.
Like the residents of this East Sarasota settlement, the one-room schoolhouse harkens back to Florida’s oft forgotten pioneer days. At 1,700-square-foot, it is the community’s crown jewel, a testament to Old Florida’s southern grit and roots; tranquil and charming down to the wasps living in the eaves.
“When you walk in the ghosts say hey, and you say hey back,” says Becky Ayech, President of the Miakka Community Club. “The fact that it’s still standing, when everything else old in Sarasota County gets torn down exemplifies our community spirit.”