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    Tampa Bay Landmarks and Destinations
    Tampa Bay Landmarks and Destinations
    Tampa Bay Landmarks and Destinations
    Ebook154 pages49 minutes

    Tampa Bay Landmarks and Destinations

    By Joshua McMorrow-Hernandez

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    About this ebook

    This book takes a colorful look at the amusement parks, restaurants, parks, beaches, and other points of interest known and loved by Tampa Bay locals and tourists alike. From Busch Gardens to Sunken Gardens, Golden Gate Speedway to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, and Colonial Beach to Clearwater Beach, Images of Modern America: Tampa Bay Landmarks and Destinations honors the diverse, unforgettable attractions that helped entice millions to visit and live in this beautiful region of west central Florida.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateApr 27, 2015
    ISBN9781439651063
    Tampa Bay Landmarks and Destinations
    Author

    Joshua McMorrow-Hernandez

    Author Joshua McMorrow-Hernandez is a Tampa native and historian who grew up visiting Busch Gardens Tampa Bay. Focusing primarily on the park's first half-century of existence, he details the colorful history of Busch Gardens with more than 160 vintage photographs from private collections and historical archives. McMorrow-Hernandez has authored other books profiling Tampa history and has written about local landmarks and attractions for publications including the Tampa Bay Times and Tampa Bay Magazine.

    Read more from Joshua Mc Morrow Hernandez

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      Tampa Bay Landmarks and Destinations - Joshua McMorrow-Hernandez

      Inc.

      INTRODUCTION

      When Pánfilo de Narváez and Hernando de Soto arrived in the Tampa Bay region during the first decades of the 1500s, they and their crews were looking for gold. While the Spanish explorers found none of the precious yellow-colored metal in west central Florida, the natural beauty of the Tampa Bay area is definitely worth its weight in gold. The region has drawn millions of tourists from all over the world since. Many of these visitors have become full-time residents, drawn to the area by its white Gulf Coast beaches, subtropical and temperate flora and fauna, countless lakes, and flourishing arts and entertainment scene.

      While the region is commonly referred to as Tampa Bay today, this is not the name of any city; this is a common misconception partly caused by the names of local professional sports teams (such as professional football’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers and baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays) as well as a host of players in the tourism and commerce industries. The hub of the bay area is Tampa itself. The city would arise following the creation of a frontier post called Fort Brooke, which was established in 1824 by the US Army in the area where the Tampa Convention Center stands today. Fort Brooke served during three Seminole Wars and the Civil War before it was decommissioned in 1883. By then, a small village had grown around the fort, which by 1849 would be incorporated as Tampa. Tampa, for the record, is a name that is thought by many to mean sticks of fire in the language of the Calusa Native Americans who lived just south of Tampa Bay for centuries. Sticks of fire may refer to frequent summertime lightning strikes in the area or a place to gather sticks of wood for campfires. While the Tampa name has Calusa origins, the immediate bay area was actually populated by the Tocobaga people.

      The 1880s would see the beginnings of the phosphate and cigar industries in the Tampa area. At the same time, railroad magnate Henry Bradley Plant spearheaded the development of local rail lines, helping put Tampa on the map as a tourism destination and industrial epicenter. A savvy developer, Plant also constructed his beautiful Tampa Bay Hotel in 1891. This grandiose building near the Hillsborough River has since been incorporated into the University of Tampa campus and graces the skyline with domes, turrets, and minarets.

      While Plant was busy building his majestic hotel in Tampa, which had been officially charted as a city in 1887, two developers named Peter Demens and John C. Williams were already hard at work across the bay, laying the groundwork for the city of St. Petersburg. In 1888, Demens, who spent much of his youth growing up in St. Petersburg, Russia, built the Detroit Hotel—named for the city where Williams was born and raised. The hotel, which was built for visitors rolling in on the local Orange Belt Railway Demens introduced, has been significantly modified over the years and stands today at 215 Central Avenue as a condominium complex.

      The area of present-day Clearwater was originally inhabited by the Tocobaga people, and in 1835 Fort Harrison was established by the US Army. Fort Harrison was built on a bluff near Clearwater Harbor and served during the Seminole Wars. Settlement brought farming pioneer families to the region, and the community of Clear Water Harbor, a name thought to have arisen from a freshwater spring near where the current city hall building stands, would be established in 1891. The city of Clearwater was incorporated in 1915. By then, Henry B. Plant, who was enjoying success as the proprietor of the Tampa Bay Hotel across the bay, had helped propagate tourism in the Clearwater area with the construction of his Victorian-style Belleview Biltmore resort hotel in 1897.

      Many of the smaller cities and towns in the region such as Bradenton, Dunedin, and Largo were incorporated around the turn of the 20th century. The warm mineral water at Sulphur Springs would draw tourists to Tampa during the first decades of the 20th century, while St. Petersburg first hosted baseball spring training in 1914. Clearwater Beach was linked to the mainland by bridge in 1915, baseball began spring training at McKechnie Field in Bradenton in 1923, and Tampa Downs (later Tampa Bay Downs) brought thoroughbred horse racing to Oldsmar in 1926. All of these attractions were among the many frequented by the so-called Tin Can Tourists who began arriving in the Tampa Bay area by the winter of 1919–1920, following the economic prosperity after World War I and the burgeoning popularity of the automobile.

      Like the rest of the country, Florida was struck hard by the economic turmoil of the Great Depression, and matters in the Sunshine State were made all the worse as the land boom of the 1920s had gone bust before the Roaring Twenties rolled away. The 1930s brought tough times for

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