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To recognize his influence on, and investment in, the state's future, the Florida legislature named the newly created Collier County for him on May 8, 1923. He manifested tremendous energy in other pursuits. He was involved in the national Boy Scout movement. In New York, serving as special deputy commissioner for public safety, he introduced the use of white and yellow traffic divider lines on highways.
Following the Lindbergh kidnapping in March 1932, he was influential in persuading the U.S. government to join, in 1938, INTERPOL, which had been formed in 1923. He was decorated by nine foreign governments.
Collier died March 13, 1939, in Manhattan, survived by his wife and three sons, Barron Jr., Miles, and Samuel Carnes, and was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in Bronx, New York. Although the Great Depression had strained his finances and slowed development of their Florida lands, the next generations of his family would continue his development work in subsequent decades.
The family members participated in many sports, including motorsports, and especially road racing, which led to the sons Miles and Sam founding the Automobile Racing Club of America in 1933, renamed in 1944 as the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA). Miles, Cameron Argetsinger, and Briggs Cunningham were instrumental in founding the Watkins Glen racing facility, near one of their summer retreats. Juliet worried about the risks of racing and tried to influence her sons against it; Sam would indeed die in a racing accident in 1950 at Watkins Glen. Briggs's renowned automobile collection was purchased by a member of the Collier family, and is now part of the Revs Institute for Automotive Research in Naples, Florida, which is open to the public.
While Collier himself was never the active director of his Florida affairs, he brought into his organization many local people and others from outside the state who remained to play key roles in the company and in the county. Among the latter was David Graham Copeland. He was a well-trained engineer. He came to Collier County in 1924 as chief engineer of the Alexander, Ramsay and Kerr Construction Company and directed the building operations of the Collier enterprises. In 1929 he resigned as chief engineer but remained resident manager of the Collier properties in the county until he retired in 1947. Copeland directed the computing and mapping of a map of Collier County that was published in 1947. It has served not only as a geographical guide but provides information for historians as well.