Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
1
Sampling craft beer and pondering Dalí's
Hallucinogenic Toreador
(not ne-
cessarily in that order) in
St Petersburg
.
2
Paddling the waterways of
Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park
beside
slow-moving manatees.
3
Juggling art and circus at Sarasota's
Ringling Museum Complex
.
4
Finding Old Florida on
Anna Maria Island
.
5
Exploring the history time-warp that is
Historic Spanish Point
.
6
Freewheeling through forest and along the Intracoastal on the
Legacy
Trail
.
7
Hunting for shells with the kids on
Sanibel Island
.
8
Getting lost on secluded Cayo Costa Island, mostly preserved as
Cayo
a
Admiring bald cypress and wood storks at
Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary
.
History
First established as Fort Brooke in 1824, Tampa was little more than a yellow-fever-
plagued minor port for most of its early history. Then phosphate was discovered and
Tampa's fortunes changed. In 1883, Henry B Plant built a railroad connecting Tampa with
Jacksonville. And in 1886, the first in a wave of cigar manufacturers relocated from Key
West to Tampa, in large part because of the easy railroad transportation north.
As in Florida generally, railroads led to increased tourism by northern 'snowbirds.' In
1885, inventor Thomas Alva Edison became one of the most famous, building a winter
home in Fort Myers. In another budding winter resort, Sarasota, John Ringling located the
winter home of his traveling circus in 1911. By the time the Tamiami Trail was completed
in 1928 - connecting the region to Miami - Tampa and neighboring St Petersburg were
Florida's third- and fourth-largest cities, respectively.
Then the Great Depression hit. Undermined by the advent of machine-rolled cigarettes,
the cigar industry steadily declined (eventually folding entirely with the later 1959 US em-
bargo of Cuba). After WWII, however, GIs who'd served at Tampa's MacDill Field re-
turned to settle down, and new arrivals flooded the region again, with the Tampa Bay area
topping 3 million residents in 2007.
