The project headquarters were located at Onion Key, a former Calusa settlement, where several portable houses were erected, along with docks and a small electrical station.

These advertisements often featured exaggerated or false claims, such as the site having banana, orange, lime, and coconut plants leftover from a Spanish settlement.

[11] Company president William G. Blanchard and his family visited the town in June 1926, taking a committee from the county commissioners to review the planned site of the Poinciana Trail.

[4] A school named "Poinciana Park" was located in the western half of mainland Monroe County around this time,[12] but it is unknown if this was connected to the development.

[13] A few employees moved the island's small electric station to a stretch of coast just north of the Lostmans River mouth and built some tar paper shacks around it, but nothing became of this.