Historic Pinellas County

Thank you for your interest in this HPNbooks publication.
For more information about other HPNbooks publications, or information about
producing your own book with us, please visit www.hpnbooks.com.

HISTORIC
PINELLAS
COUNTY
A Centennial History
by James Anthony Schnur
A publication of the
Pinellas County Historical Society
and Heritage Village
HPNbooks
A division of Lammert Incorporated
San Antonio, Texas

CONTENTS
3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
3 PINELLAS COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
4 CHAPTER 1 Early Footprints in the Sand
8 CHAPTER 2 Pioneers Arrive along Punta Pinal (1821-1887)
13 CHAPTER 3 Railroads and Regional Rivalries (1888-1911)
19 CHAPTER 4 Citrus Groves, Truck Farmers, and Land Booms (1912-1935)
28 CHAPTER 5 Wartime Mobilization along “Peerless Pinellas” (1936-1945)
31 CHAPTER 6 Progressive Pinellas and the Florida Dream (1946-1971)
39 CHAPTER 7 Subdivisions, Retirement Communities, and “Condomania” (1972-2000)
43 EPILOGUE A New Millennium, A New Century (2001-2012)
45 SHARING THE HERITAGE
64 ABOUT THE AUTHOR
64 ABOUT THE ARTIST
First Edition
Copyright © 2012 HPNbooks
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing
from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to HPNbooks, 11535 Galm Road, Suite 101, San Antonio, Texas, 78254, (800) 749-9790, www.hpnbooks.com.
ISBN: 9781935377917
Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 2012948214
Historic Pinellas County: A Centennial History
author: James Anthony Schnur
front cover artist: Christopher Still
contributing writer for sharing the heritage: Joe Goodpasture
HPNbooks
president: Ron Lammert
project managers: Barry Black, Igor Patrushev
administration: Donna M. Mata, Melissa G. Quinn
book sales: Dee Steidle
production: Colin Hart, Evelyn Hart, Glenda Tarazon Krouse, Tony Quinn
2 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author appreciates the outstanding support he received from the board and members of the Pinellas County Historical
Society. Ellen Babb and Carolyn S. Hoffman offered editorial guidance throughout this project. Dean Carol G. Hixson and her
colleagues at the Nelson Poynter Memorial Library provided a wealth of encouragement. The author’s wife, Phuongdung Schnur,
patiently tolerated many evenings of watching me type and edit this manuscript.
–James Anthony Schnur
PINELLAS COUNTY
HISTORICAL SOCIETY
On April 7, 1976, the Pinellas County Historical Society
(PCHS) held an introductory meeting in the old courthouse.
At this gathering, plans were unveiled for the Pinellas
County Historical Museum at Heritage Village (known as
Heritage Park back then). Members of the Pinellas County
Historical Commission invited leaders from historical
societies and other organizations throughout the county,
including representatives that spanned the entire peninsula
from St. Petersburg to Tarpon Springs.
The arrival of the first two structures at Heritage Village—
the Plant-Sumner House and Seven Gables—during the
Bicentennial year led to great excitement. Groundbreaking
ceremonies took place in the spring of 1976, but much
needed to be done before the original ten-acre tract could
open to the public. An important step took place when the
Preservationists rejoiced when Seven Gables, a 1907 late Queen Anne style home, came down first PCHS officers signed their incorporation papers on
from its perch on the bluffs of downtown Clearwater for a barge ride along the intracoastal August 24, 1976. Since January 1977, the Society has
waterway to Walsingham Road and its new location at Heritage Village. Seven Gables was maintained tax-exempt status that allows our organization
donated to the Village by Don Williams and his family. Williams also designed the original site to operate as a non-profit and raise funds for the Village.
plan for Heritage Village. Seven Gables made the journey in one piece and its move attracted For more than thirty-six years, PCHS has served as a
international attention.
support organization for Heritage Village. Funds raised by
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
the Society assist with educational and cultural programs at
the Village. Our members serve as docents and volunteers
in the various structures at the Village. We assist researchers interested in our county’s history by acquiring materials for the Archives
and Library at Heritage Village and by supporting efforts to conserve museum collections. Funding has helped offset the costs
associated with moving historic structures to the Village and in developing many of the exhibits visitors enjoy.
The Society sponsors a variety of programs. Our public lecture series showcases the history of agriculture, coastal living,
community life, and tourism that defines our heritage. An annual Jubilee has brought craft vendors and performers to the Village
for more than thirty years. We continue to explore opportunities that will benefit the Village and realize the importance of our role
as partners that preserve our county’s history.
As Pinellas County enters its second century, the Pinellas County Historical Society looks forward to continuing its service to
Heritage Village. The enthusiasm we had during the Bicentennial celebrations continues to this day.
Acknowledgements ✦ 3

Above: Indian mounds, such as this
one once located near Booker Creek,
once dotted the landscape. Most had
disappeared by 1920. Early settlers
often used the shells from these
mounds for pavement along the
muddy and sandy roads.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Below: In their haste to construct the
Pinellas Bayway, engineers removed a
mound that had existed in the area
since long before the Spanish came to
North America. By the early 1960s,
asphalt covered the site of this mound.
Twenty years later, condominiums
and homes replaced many of the
nearby mangroves.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
CHAPTER 1
EARLY FOOTPRINTS IN THE SAND
More than eight-thousand years ago, the earliest human settlers arrived along the Florida
peninsula. Known as Paleoindians, these people hunted big game and foraged for small game and
plants. In addition to deer, opossums, raccoons, and turtles, early Paleoindians would have
encountered mammoths, mastodons, and tapirs. At the end of the last Ice Age, the shoreline of the
Gulf of Mexico was more than forty miles to the west of its present location. Tampa Bay did not
exist. The area possessed a drier climate, with sea levels as much as 100 feet lower along the
continental shelf. As sea levels began to rise, Tampa Bay formed and the Pinellas peninsula became
a distinct geological feature. Many of the original coastal settlements along the Gulf of Mexico are
presently submerged below 60 to 120 feet of water.
During the Early Archaic Period (ca. 6000 B.C.E.–5000 B.C.E.), settlers adapted to the fisher-hunter
lifestyle and enjoyed a wider array of plant and animal foods. These early settlers used stone tools
(lithics), including bifacial knives and scrapers, though most of their tools remained simple in
composition. Coastal communities along the Gulf of Mexico moved eastward as the sea levels rose
and the Florida peninsula shrank. Oaks and hardwood forests abounded. Some larger animal
species, including the mastodon, disappeared from the landscape during this period.
The population became more sedentary and used a greater variety of stone and shell tools during
the Middle Archaic Period (ca. 5000 B.C.E.–2000 B.C.E.). Sea levels stabilized at or near the current
shoreline. Tampa Bay, Boca Ciega Bay, and other estuaries took shape. Some aboriginal settlements
from this period included sites at Mound Park and Bayboro along Booker Creek, and Salt Creek
south of downtown St. Petersburg. By the Late Archaic Period (ca. 2000 B.C.E.–1200 B.C.E.),
indigenous populations began to make fiber-tempered pottery. Small villages existed at or near shell
mounds. The environment became increasingly moist. Pines outnumbered oaks as forests included
a wider variety of species.
The Early Woodland or Florida Transitional Period (ca. 1200 B.C.E.–500 B.C.E.) marked the
epoch when settled communities with more complex political systems and religious practices
started to develop along the Pinellas peninsula. New styles of pottery replaced fiber-tempered
works. Sand and limestone pieces, along with soapstone pottery and ornamental decorations,
became more common. Environmental changes continued from the Late Archaic period, as moist
and humid conditions regularly blanketed the peninsula.
4 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

Settlers engaged in trade activities with distant
populations who lived in what is the present-day
Southeastern and Midwestern United States
during the Middle Woodland or Manasota Period
(ca. 500 B.C.E.–700 A.D.). Burial ceremony practices
became more elaborate during this period.
Indigenous populations created a wide variety of
pottery, some tending to be thicker and more
ornamental in style. Firing methods for pottery
improved. Manasota populations in the Tampa
Bay region settled along saltwater marshes,
freshwater lakes, and coastal hammocks. Bears,
bobcats, Florida panthers, and a wider variety
of animal species lived in west central Florida.
Settlements at the Yat Kitischee site along Old
Tampa Bay and the Safford Mound in Tarpon
Springs flourished during this period.
Trade networks with other cultures multiplied
during the Late Woodland or Weedon Island
Period (ca. 700-1000 A.D.). Burial mounds
appeared in greater numbers, with mortuary pottery
entombed within the shell and earthen middens.
Painted pottery, effigy pots, incised pottery,
and decorated pots became more common. Larger
shell mounds, sometimes thirty feet in width, rose
near areas with long-established settlements.
Turkey, deer, and an abundance of seafood sustained
the settlers and allowed for population
increase as humanity’s footprint on the peninsula
grew. Mosquitoes and other pests brought discomfort
during the warm and humid summers.
Settlements from the Mississippian or Safety
Harbor Period (ca. 1000–1500 A.D.) exhibited
an increasingly complex social order with
chiefs, temple mounds, and a greater emphasis
on ceremonial activities. Pottery traditions from
the Weedon Island culture continued, although
some pieces lacked decorative elements and
may have been more hastily made. Corns, beans,
and squash arrived in Florida and became an
important food source. Agricultural practices
improved as crop cultivation followed seasonal
growing cycles. A wide array of land animals and
seafood sustained coastal and
estuarine settlements. During this
time, Tocobaga Indians settled
along a broad portion of Florida’s
west coast between Charlotte
Harbor and Crystal River, including
the Pinellas peninsula.
Juan Ponce de León arrived
along Florida’s east coast during
the spring of 1513. Although
Ponce de León never set foot
upon the Pinellas peninsula, he
did become the first documented
Spanish conquistador to visit
Florida. After the initial contact between
Europeans and Indians, the depopulation of the
indigenous settlements accelerated at a rapid
pace, largely due to smallpox and other diseases
for which the Pre-Columbian cultures had no
tolerance. The demise of the local tribes began
long before the first Europeans visited the
Pinellas peninsula due to trading networks with
affected Indians elsewhere.
Above, left and right: From the Indian
mound at Philippe Park, the Tocobaga
Indians had a clear view of any
intruders coming up Tampa Bay.
Odet Philippe, one of the earliest
white settlers in the region, took
possession of this site during the early
1820s and introduced grapefruit
cultivation to the region.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAMES A. SCHNUR.
Below: A tranquil location today,
Weedon Island has experienced
moments of frenzied activity. Native
Americans who lived in this area
before the Spaniards arrived
developed vibrant communities.
During the early 1920s, Eugene M.
Elliott acquired much of Weedon
Island with hopes of getting rich.
George Gandy’s sales manager for the
Gandy Bridge, Elliott moonlighted as
a land developer with shady
intentions. He placed a number of
non-native pieces at Weedon, hoping
that members of the Smithsonian
Institution whom he had contacted
would provide publicity when they
released their ‘findings.’ Elliott lost
many of his investments as the land
boom ended.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAMES A. SCHNUR.
Chapter 1 ✦ 5

Members of the Pánfilo de Narváez
expedition arrived in the Jungle Prada
area of western St. Petersburg near
Park Street in the spring of 1528.
They may have also traveled along
the bluffs near Clearwater before
going into the heart of Florida on a
failed search for gold.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAMES A. SCHNUR.
The Spanish governor of Jamaica dispatched
Alonso Álvarez de Pineda on a mission in 1519 to
explore the Gulf coast of Florida to determine
whether this land was a series of islands or a
larger continent. He passed by the Pinellas
peninsula as he sought a water passage from the
Gulf of Mexico to Asia. A map drawn by Alonso
Álvarez de Pineda is the earliest known map of
European origin showing the mouth of Tampa
Bay and the Pinellas peninsula.
In 1527, Spanish King Carlos I (also known as
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor) granted longtime
conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez permission to
take possession of La Florida. Six years earlier, Juan
Ponce de León had perished during his second visit
to Florida after battling with the Calusa Indians of
southwest Florida. Narváez sailed from Andalusia
in southern Spain with five ships and over 400
men in June 1527. In mid-April 1528, Narváez
reached a site he called Rio de las Palmas (River
of the Palms) at or near Jungle Prada in presentday
St. Petersburg. Hearing about rumors of gold
northward in the interior of La Florida at a place
known as Ocali, Narváez remembered the successful
incursion of the Hernán Cortés expedition into
the Aztec Empire in February 1519 that led to the
discovery of gold and the downfall of Montezuma.
Although Narváez had originally been dispatched
in early 1520 to capture Cortés, most of his men
instead joined Cortés in the plunder of the Aztecs.
Narváez sought to locate similar wealth in
Spanish Florida. Among those on the journey were
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (the expedition’s treasurer)
and Estebanico (the first known person of
African descent who set foot in Pinellas County
and in the present-day United States). During his
interactions with the local Ucita tribe and other
Tocobaga cultures in Pinellas, Narváez showed
deception and brutality. In early May 1528,
Narváez, Cabeza de Vaca, Estebanico, and approximately
300 men wandered into the Florida interior
in search of gold. Narváez ordered his ships to
meet him at an undetermined point along the
coastline. After surviving the intense summer but
failing to find gold, the Narváez expedition reached
a point somewhere along the Florida Panhandle.
Soon thereafter, tragedy struck as most members of
the expedition perished in storms and battles with
Indians. Only Cabeza de Vaca, Estebanico, and two
others survived; they traveled amongst the Indians,
sometimes became slaves of the Indians, and finally
reached an outpost on the remote northern
boundary of New Spain (Mexico) in 1536.
Pinellas and the Tampa Bay region also became
the site of the first “Pocahontas” legend, long before
the real Pocahontas and Captain John Smith
were even born. In late 1528, a search party arrived
at the mouth of Tampa Bay in an unsuccessful
attempt to locate members of the Narváez expedition.
Chief Hirrihigua of the Ucita tribe captured
and killed many members of this expedition, perhaps
in retaliation for the brutality they encountered
from Narváez. However, one Spaniard, Juan
Ortiz, escaped certain execution after Hirrihigua’s
wife and daughter urged the chief to allow Ortiz to
live. Ortiz became fluent in the local languages and
lived with the Ucita, possibly as a slave.
In May 1539, when the Hernando de Soto
expedition arrived at or near the mouth of Tampa
Bay with approximately 600 men and approximately
200 horses, de Soto encountered Juan
Ortiz, liberated him, and used him as a translator.
Ortiz’s familiarity with the geography in the immediate
Tampa Bay region proved useful, though his
value diminished as they moved northward along
the peninsula. Similar to earlier conquistadors,
de Soto showed brutality towards the Native
Americans he encountered. Since he landed at the
time of the Feast of the Holy Spirit, he named the
region and its bay Espiritu Santo.
Even though diseases had decimated the native
populations, Spanish conquistadors failed to take
possession of the Pinellas peninsula during the
1500s. In June 1549, Luis Cancer de Barbastro, a
member of the Dominican order who had some
success in pacification of Indians while in Mexico,
decided to bring a group of missionaries eastward
across the Gulf of Mexico. Unfortunately for them,
Barbastro and his entourage arrived near the southern
tip of the Pinellas peninsula at Pinellas Point.
6 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

Local members of the Tocobaga tribe used clubs to
pummel them to death. King Philip II of Spain commissioned
Pedro Menéndez de Avilés as governor
(adelantado) of Florida in March 1565 and ordered
him to remove or kill the French Huguenots along
the mouth of the St. Johns River near present-day
Jacksonville. Menéndez successfully defeated the
French and established St. Augustine in 1565 as
the oldest European settlement in the present-day
United States. However his plans to conquer the
tribes along the Pinellas peninsula met with failure.
In mid-1567, Menéndez visited the Indian settlement
at Tocobaga along Old Tampa Bay, near
Safety Harbor. He stationed a garrison of thirty
men that served under orders of Captain García
Martínez de Cos at this site. Menéndez had
sought to strengthen Spanish holdings along
peninsular Florida south of St. Augustine in order
to place the entire continent of North America
under the Spanish realm. Although Father Juan
Rogel of the Jesuit order visited the site later in
1567 and documented that things appeared
normal, when Rogel returned to Tocobaga in
January 1568, his party found evidence that the
Indians had killed the Spaniards.
The origin of Pinellas County’s name came
from an April 1757 expedition to survey the
Tampa Bay region. Don Francisco Maria Celi, a
pilot in the royal Spanish fleet, visited the Pinellas
peninsula and mapped Tampa Bay. Celi gave
names to various islands along the Pinellas coastline
and his log referred to the lower tip of the
Pinellas peninsula (Pinellas Point) as Punta Pinal
de Jiménez when he wrote, “I also observed a
point having many pine trees, to which I gave the
name Punta Pinal de Jiménez.” The name Jiménez
referred to his lieutenant, Don José Jiménez.
Celi’s reference to a point with pines, when translated
to English, became Pinellas Point. Aside
from giving Pinellas its name, Spain’s greatest
contribution to Punta Pinal’s history was the
abundance of citrus that appeared on the peninsula.
Oranges and other citrus plants did not exist
in Florida before the arrival of the Spaniards.
Few settlers called Pinellas home before the
early 1800s, although Florida changed hands as
distant battles reshaped North America. Spain had
joined France as an ally against England in the
Seven Years’ War, known in North America as the
French and Indian War. When England secured
victory, Spain and France signed the Treaty of Paris
in February 1763. Nearly 250 years after Juan
Ponce de León first encountered La Florida, the
first Spanish period came to an end. The Pinellas
peninsula fell under the British administration
of East Florida, headquartered at St. Augustine,
though the English expressed little interest in the
Tampa Bay region. Twenty years later, with the end
of the American Revolution, the defeated English
signed separate treaties with the American patriots
and their French and Spanish allies. Collectively
known as the Peace of Paris, these treaties
pledged sovereignty for the colonies that formed
the United States and returned Florida to Spain.
In February 1819, Spain entered into negotiations
with the United States to end its colonial
presence in Florida and transfer its holdings to the
United States. Spanish Minister Luis de Onís and
U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams negotiated
the Adams-Onís Treaty, also known as the
Transcontinental Treaty of 1819. Two years later,
the United States ratified the Adams-Onís Treaty
and Florida became a territory of the United States.
Although most of the Pre-Columbian indigenous
cultures had disappeared from the Pinellas
peninsula by the 1700s due to battles and illness,
occasional fishing parties visited the area. Some
stayed for brief periods of time to hunt the abundant
wildlife; others trolled along the waters to harvest
seafood. They would occasionally establish
fishing camps and send their catch back to Cuba.
These early fishing rancheros operated during the
cooler months when fewer mosquitoes swarmed
the area. Others may have lived in isolation because
they had deserted military service. Whether
Native American or of European, African, Cuban,
Caribbean, or mixed ancestry, these itinerant visitors
left little record of their existence. As Florida
entered the Union, the Pinellas peninsula remained
a remote appendage in an inhospitable land.
Located along Park Street a few
blocks south of Tyrone/Bay Pines
Boulevard, the site of Abercrombie
Park became a popular meeting place
for Native Americans who lived here
long before the Europeans arrived
in America.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAMES A. SCHNUR.
Chapter 1 ✦ 7

CHAPTER 2
PIONEERS ARRIVE ALONG PUNTA PINAL (1821-1887)
Top, left: Seven McMullen brothers
homesteaded in Pinellas during the
mid-1800s. They established families,
grew crops, and created settlements.
This image, taken at the Atlanta
Cotton Exchange in the early 1880s,
shows the McMullen brothers.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Top, right: After the Civil War ended,
Dan McMullen returned to Pinellas.
His family built a home near presentday
Rosery Road in 1868. “Uncle”
Dan, the third person from the right
in this picture, developed a large
ranch and farm. Members of the
McMullen family lived in this home
continuously for more than 120 years
before the structure moved to
Heritage Village.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Colonel George Mercer Brooke established a fort at the mouth of the Hillsborough River in late 1823.
Fort Brooke, on the site near present-day Channelside in downtown Tampa, became a remote outpost
and the settlement of Tampa took shape around it in the mid-1820s. Odet Philippe, an early settler in
Tampa, moved to the Safety Harbor area in 1832 and became the first documented permanent settler
along the Pinellas peninsula since the indigenous population had vanished. Philippe cultivated grapefruit
and soon found others coming to his area.
Between 1835 and 1842, the Second Seminole War consumed much of northern Florida. A few
skirmishes came to Pinellas. In the late 1830s, William Bunce operated a fishing ranchero on an island that
became part of present-day Tierra Verde, not too far from the site of Bunce’s Pass. Troops from Fort Brooke
destroyed his ranchero in October 1840 because they thought Bunce sympathized with the Seminoles.
In April 1841 authorities established Fort Harrison in the Harbor Oaks area of Clearwater as a military outpost
during the war. Named in honor of William Henry Harrison, our ninth President, Fort Harrison served
troops for less than seven months, a period six months longer than Harrison occupied the White House.
The Armed Occupation Act, passed by Congress in August 1842, opened much of peninsular Florida
to settlers after the Second Seminole War. Enacted to encourage settlement along lands previously
occupied by Indians, homesteaders could claim tracts of up to 160 acres on designated lands if
they agreed to live on the site for five years, cultivate at least five acres, and bear arms to protect against
incursions from runaway Seminoles and slaves. Many historians view this act as a model for the
Homestead Act of 1862. Twenty-four claims under this act included lands in present-day Pinellas County.
Captain Samuel H. Stevenson filed a claim in the area close to the Clearwater/Dunedin boundary
near Stevenson Creek in November 1842. A month later, James Stevens, the man known as “The Father
of Clearwater,” received a permit for lands west of Fort Harrison Avenue. Stevens soon persuaded a
friend, John S. Taylor, Sr., to acquire lands in the Clearwater area. Along Old Tampa Bay, Odet Philippe
filed a claim in January 1843. A few years later, Richard Booth, a sailor and native of England, settled
nearby. Booth married Philippe’s daughter in May 1847.
By the mid-1840s, more pioneers arrived. Antonio Maximo Hernandez, a veteran of the Second
Seminole War, received permission to settle at Maximo Point in southern St. Petersburg near Frenchman’s
Creek. John (Juan) Levique—called “French John” by one of the surveyors—received a permit for lands
near the Jungle area of western St. Petersburg along Boca Ciega Bay in mid-1843. Alexander McKay
claimed land near McKay Creek and Largo’s Harbor Hills and Anona areas. By the time Florida had
obtained statehood on March 3, 1845, James Parramore McMullen had already journeyed to the area along
Alligator Creek near the site of his cabin at Coachman and Old Coachman roads. His six brothers soon
followed his trail from southern Georgia. By the 1920s, McMullen family reunions attracted more than
one-thousand attendees.
8 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

These settlers lived in a remote area. Without a
boat, travel to Tampa along small dirt paths took
more than a day. Their quiet was disrupted in late
September 1848 by a hurricane known as the
“Gale of ’48.” The most destructive hurricane to
hit the Pinellas peninsula in recorded history, this
storm destroyed the original lighthouse at Egmont
Key, brought storm surges surpassing fifteen feet
into Tampa Bay, and carved the channel at
Johns Pass where once a single island had existed.
In early 1849, six months after the storm, Robert
E. Lee spent time along the Florida coastline
conducting surveys. Then an American colonel
based out of Baltimore, Lee insisted that the
United States fortify the islands along the
northern mouth of Tampa Bay for defensive
purposes. Lee later fought for the Confederacy,
and plans to establish what would become
Fort DeSoto had to wait for nearly a half-century.
During the late antebellum period, a handful of
notable pioneer families homesteaded along the
Pinellas peninsula. They harvested crops, raised
livestock, and shipped products to ports at Cedar
Key, Key West, and Tampa. According to the 1850
federal census, the Pinellas peninsula had 178
residents. In late 1851, David B.
Turner and Mary Campbell Turner
settled at Indian Rocks before later
moving to present-day Clearwater.
Their son, Arthur Campbell Turner,
played an important role in the
development of mid and upper-
Pinellas. A veteran of the Second
Seminole War, Richard Leroy
Garrison received an 1852 land
grant along both sides of Curlew
Creek, becoming the first person to
homestead in what is now Dunedin.
Soon, other settlers followed. One
of them, Major A. G. Anderson,
even erected a cotton gin operated
by horses at the site of Dunedin’s Edgewater Park.
Residents harvested Sea Island cotton in the area
until a hurricane destroyed the gin in 1884.
Children needed schooling. In 1853 or thereabouts,
James P. McMullen erected the first school
on the Pinellas peninsula, a simple log cabin. Before
the construction of the school, students occasionally
met in the attic of McMullen’s sugarhouse.
McMullen constructed the benches and teacher’s
desk. Known as the “McMullen Log School,” family
members also called the school “Sylvan Abbey,”
the name of the first teacher’s daughter. John S.
Taylor, Sr., launched the first public school in
1855 at the current site of Clearwater High School.
By 1854 there was even talk of David Levy Yulee
constructing his railroad from Fernandina (north of
Jacksonville) to Tampa Bay. Surveyors inspected
unpopulated lands near downtown St. Petersburg.
William Paul, a carpenter from this expedition,
returned in November 1854 to a possible dock site
for this railroad, near the current location of the
Vinoy Hotel. Paul decided to cultivate citrus, developing
the first substantial orange grove in lower
Pinellas. By this time, Philippe and Booth had established
notable groves near Safety Harbor, Oldsmar,
Top, left: Before bridges connected
barrier islands to the mainland,
settlers relied on ferries such as this
one that operated between Anona and
Indian Rocks in the 1890s.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Top, right: This large grove once
sat along Central Avenue near Sixth
Street in downtown St. Petersburg in
the 1880s.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Below: The impressive bluffs
of A. L. Anderson Park offer a
commanding view of Lake Tarpon.
It has been said that the Duke of
Sutherland stood atop these bluffs in
the mid 1880s when he visited.
The first name for the Palm Harbor
settlement, Sutherland, honored this
member of the English royalty who
came here before the railroad arrived.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAMES A. SCHNUR.
Chapter 2 ✦ 9

Above: Residents who lived in lower
Pinellas prior to the arrival of the
railroad in 1888 had to remain selfsufficient.
Many fished along the lakes
and estuaries. Others, such as those in
this 1886 image, hunted.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Below: John Donaldson, a former
slave, became an early settler of lower
Pinellas near Lake Maggiore, then
known as Salt Lake.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
and Clearwater. The Third Seminole War, lasting
from 1855 through 1858, derailed Yulee’s plans to
bring the iron horse to Tampa Bay; instead, Yulee
selected Cedar Key as his Gulf of Mexico terminus.
Early cattle farming came to the lower Pinellas
peninsula when James R. Hay took on the job
of watching herds for Tampa’s cattle families
along a parcel near Lakeview Avenue (Twenty-
Second Avenue South) in 1856. A year later,
Abel Miranda, a native of St. Augustine of
Cuban ancestry, settled along the lower Pinellas
peninsula with his wife, Eliza. A veteran of
the Third Seminole War, Miranda obtained the
remaining structures erected by Paul and moved
them to an area along Big Bayou near the
Driftwood neighborhood of St. Petersburg. By
1859, Eliza’s brothers, John Bethell and William
Bethell, settled at Little Bayou and developed a
small ranchero that harvested mullet from the bay
and gulf waters. This area south of downtown
St. Petersburg soon
became a settlement
known as “Pinellas.”
Before the end of
1859, the first post
office on the peninsula
was established at
“Clear Water Harbor.”
Election returns from
that year indicated that
a total of eight votes
were cast on the
Pinellas peninsula.
On the eve of the
Civil War, the Pinellas
peninsula had fewer than 400 residents scattered
in isolated farming and fishing settlements.
Tensions escalated in the Southern states following
the election of Abraham Lincoln. Florida
seceded from the Union on January 10, 1861.
Shortly after the attack on Fort Sumter in April,
President Lincoln called for a blockade along
Florida’s sparsely populated shoreline. He
employed a tactic devised by General Winfield
Scott known as the Anaconda Strategy.
Many heads of Pinellas pioneer families joined
the Confederate military or state forces by
mid-1861, though there is little if any evidence
that they had slaves of their own. Captain John
Thomas Lowe of Anona, along with others in the
Lowe and Meares families, prepared to leave settlements
along The Narrows. As the Union blockade
strangled Confederate commerce in the area,
James McMullen and approximately sixty other
men from Western Hillsborough came together
as a military unit. Some later served in the “cow
cavalry” that drove cattle north from Florida and
kept food in the bellies of Confederate soldiers.
As the Civil War continued, contact between
settlements along the Pinellas peninsula and
other coastal ports, such as Cedar Key, became
more difficult. The presence of Union blockaders
made sailing along coastal waters a dangerous
endeavor, so those seeking provisions often traveled
by land. Settlers along the coastline resorted
to boiling salt water on the beaches or in the
brush out of the view of any ships that might pass
by their location. A few quarts of salt might be
the result of a long day of boiling, but their efforts
allowed them to preserve meats.
Although Pinellas largely escaped battles during
the Civil War years (1861-1865), many local
residents abandoned their homesteads. They
fought in the war or transported cattle and other
provisions to the front lines. The most notable
skirmish in Pinellas occurred in February 1862
when United States troops from Egmont Key
decided to attack Abel Miranda’s settlement at Big
Bayou. Miranda and his wife scurried across the
lower peninsula to the residence of William T.
Coon as Union forces fired cannons at their
homestead. When the Mirandas returned, they
found that the Union forces had destroyed their
home, fences, and other buildings. Soldiers killed
many of their orange trees, took their livestock,
robbed them of other provisions, and stole a boat.
10 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

With the war’s end in April 1865, residents
tried to restore order. By 1866, Reverend Cooley
S. Reynolds oversaw the construction of a small
log structure on North Fort Harrison Avenue and
became the first pastor of the Midway Baptist
Church, one of the earliest established churches
on the peninsula. The pastor’s younger sister,
Jennie Reynolds Plumb, taught school in this
structure by the early 1870s. John Bethell
returned to Big Bayou by 1867. Bethell remembered
that many people simply squatted upon
land during the Reconstruction era (1865-1877).
With few settlers nearby, people took control of a
plot, fenced it if necessary, and grew crops without
paying taxes on the land. James and Rebecca
Bennett arrived in the area of present-day
Gulfport in 1867 and cleared several acres near
the bayside for crops. Frederick Meyer came to
the area north of the Anclote River from Marion
County. His brother, Franklin B. “Benjamin”
Meyer, arrived a few months later. The Meyer
family founded the settlement of Anclote, west of
present-day Tarpon Springs.
The following year, in 1868, John and Anna
Germain Donaldson traveled by oxcart from
Alabama to the lower Pinellas peninsula as
servants of Louis Bell, Jr., and his family. John
worked for Bell in the fields, and Anna served
as a housekeeper. They settled on forty acres in
the area of southwestern St. Petersburg/Gulfport
and became the first African-American settlers
in St. Petersburg. They remained after Bell sold
his interests and left. They were among the few
blacks who had moved to Pinellas before the
construction of the Orange Belt Railway in 1888.
North of Largo, Daniel “Uncle Dan” McMullen
had returned to his homestead in the fall of 1865.
By August 1868, he, wife Margaret Ann Campbell
McMullen, and their family moved into a new
home. The McMullen House, now located at
Heritage Village, was continuously occupied by
members of the McMullen family for more than
120 years, the longest period of time a single family
has owned and occupied the same home in
the recorded history of Pinellas.
More settlers arrived in the 1870s. Charles
Wharton Johnson arrived along the bluffs south
of Clearwater after getting shipwrecked in 1870
and soon settled his family in the Largo area,
while native Virginian William Alexander Belcher
came to the area of Belcher Road south of Allen’s
Creek because he feared he would get tuberculosis
in the cold winters. Meanwhile, early spongers
from Key West began harvesting sponges from
the waters near Tarpon Springs.
In the early 1870s, Elza Beasley Lealman, a
former sheriff and tax collector from Suwannee
County, arrived in lower Pinellas and settled with
his family in the area that soon took his name. He
grew citrus and had a large strawberry farm as
well. By July 1873, Reverend Reynolds established
the first newspaper along the Pinellas Peninsula
when he launched the Clear Water Times. In the
August 23, 1873, issue, Cooley included the following
passage: “Our climate is almost unequaled.
Our population is industrious and moral. These
will ensure prosperity. With the finest cotton, sugar
cane, tropical fruits, and rice, we have only to persevere
for a few years and become independent.”
Formal settlements took shape by the mid-
1870s. James P. McMullen established a community
near the northern end of the Bayside Bridge
known as Bay View. A few miles up the road
named for McMullen and Richard Booth, Robert
D. Hoyt established a nursery at Seven Oaks
where he was credited with cultivating the large
Left: Along Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard
just west of the Bayside Bridge, a
small park preserves the early site of
the Bay View community established
by Jim McMullen. Bay View once
rivaled Tampa as a place where cattle
drives took place in the late 1800s.
Farmers brought their cattle to this
site to be shipped out to Cuba and
other locations. Ironically the
same railroad that gave life to
St. Petersburg in 1888—the Orange
Belt—shifted business away from
Bay View. This land is now part
of Clearwater.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAMES A. SCHNUR.
Right: The log house built by
James P. McMullen and his family
before the Civil War became an
important meeting place for the
handful of families who lived along
the peninsula in the antebellum
period. Once located near the
intersection of Coachman and Old
Coachman Roads, this structure now
resides at Heritage Village.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAMES A. SCHNUR.
Chapter 2 ✦ 11

Top, left: Built in 1875 by George
Washington Moore, this Florida
“Cracker” house once sat near the
intersection of Highland Avenue
and Sunset Point Road in the
Clearwater/Dunedin area. Acres
of groves, crops, and open range
surrounded this Gulf Coast cottage.
The Moore House moved to
Heritage Village in July 1981
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAMES A. SCHNUR.
Top, right: Joshua and Mary Boyer
built this small cottage near
Spring Bayou in the late 1870s.
A few years later, Mary noticed
tarpons springing in the bayou, and
the community of Tarpon Springs had
a name. This structure is preserved at
Heritage Village.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAMES A. SCHNUR.
Right: Early beach residents braved
swarms of mosquitoes in their palm
thatch huts. Homer Mohr sat outside
of his beach hut near Johns Pass in
1901. With few visitors, Mohr
enjoyed an unobstructed Gulf view.
A handful of fishing rancheros
similar to this appeared along the
Gulf Beaches during the 1700s
and 1800s.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
kapok tree at this location, near McMullen-Booth
Road and Alligator Creek. By 1875, Detroit native
John Constantine Williams came to Florida. He
sought a moderate climate due to his asthma. In
January 1876, W. F. Spurlin sold his property to
John C. Williams. Williams secured other tracts
from the state, bringing his total acreage to
1,600—most of St. Petersburg’s downtown west
to Tropicana Field—at a cost of $3,800. Although
often referred to as “General Williams,” he never
held such a military rank, but his business decisions
on his holdings in lower Pinellas would
make him a ranking officer of sorts a decade later.
As Reconstruction came to an end in 1877,
new construction came to Pinellas. The “Pinellas”
settlement along Big Bayou had a post office,
George L. Jones had reached the Dunedin area by
schooner and briefly gave the settlement the
name “Jonesboro” while running a general store,
and Bahamas native Joshua Boyer sailed along the
Anclote River to Spring Bayou. At that site, he
met Alexander Ormond and his daughter, Mary.
In April, Joshua and Mary wed and, by 1880,
Mary Boyer saw a “tarpon spring” from the
bayou. Before the 1870s came to an end, John O.
Douglas and James Somerville arrived at
Jonesboro. Natives of Edinburgh in Scotland,
they established a store, and did not like the
name “Jonesboro,” instead preferring “Dunedin,”
a Gaelic name for Edinburgh. Soon, Tarpon
Springs and Dunedin had their present names.
The peninsula’s population had soared to
more than 1,100 hardy souls in 1880. In late
February 1881, the state sold four million acres
of land to Hamilton Disston in exchange for $1
million. Approximately 150,000 acres of this
land fell within present-day Pinellas County. By
early 1882, Captain John B. Walton, a surveyor,
arrived with Major Mathew Robinson Marks
and other members of an advance party sent by
Disston to inspect lands he had recently purchased.
Before the end of the year, Anson Peacely
Killen Safford, third governor of the Arizona
Territory, also reached the remote homestead of
Joshua and Mary Boyer near Spring
Bayou. In addition to surveying the
future site of Tarpon Springs, Walton
also platted the area that became
known as “Yellow Bluff,” now the
unincorporated area of Ozona. Soon,
the Disston Land Company and its
companion, the Gulf Coast Land
Company, had agents selling tracts in
“Western Hillsborough” to investors
in the Northeastern United States,
as well as England and other areas
of Europe. By the end of the decade,
Disston’s dreams of bringing a
railroad to the Pinellas peninsula
forever reshaped the landscape.
12 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

CHAPTER 3
RAILROADS AND REGIONAL RIVALRIES (1888-1911)
By the mid-1880s, Hamilton Disston focused his efforts on developing his land holdings in lower
Pinellas, rather than at Tarpon Springs. To erect the first hotel on the lower Pinellas peninsula,
a structure he named the Waldorf, Disston had lumber shipped from Apalachicola. Built quickly at
a site along Boca Ciega Bay, the Waldorf opened in what is now Gulfport in December 1884. Guests
made the cumbersome journey by boat to visit the hotel since no railroads existed along the Pinellas
peninsula. Also in 1884 a Union veteran of the Civil War, Captain Zephaniah Phillips, became the
first settler to homestead along the lower Gulf Beaches.
Two events in April 1885 shifted the focus in lower Pinellas from Disston’s holdings at Disston City,
now Gulfport, to lands in present-day St. Petersburg. On April 20 the Orange Belt Railway was
incorporated to provide rail service between Sanford and Lake Apopka, a distance of less than forty
miles. Peter Demens, a native of Russia, gained control of the railroad after the original owners failed
to pay him for railroad ties he provided. Demens drew up papers that established the Orange Belt
Investment Company and moved forward with plans to connect
the railway near Sanford with the Pinellas peninsula. Originally,
Demens worked with Hamilton Disston, who sought an alternative
rail line after Henry B. Plant’s system had arrived in Tampa. Disston
offered generous tracts of land as Demens built the rail towards
Disston’s holdings. Soon, however, their partnership soured.
The second notable event occurred on April 29 in New Orleans.
Dr. Washington Chew Van Bibber, a Baltimore physician, delivered
an address at the national convention of the American Medical
Association. Van Bibber informed his peers that he had found the
perfect site for the location of a “Health City” at Point Pinellas.
Shortly after the conference, Van Bibber’s associates had acquired a
deed for some of the lands in what is now southern St. Petersburg
with hopes of making profits from his public statements.
Above: This 1889 map traces the
path of the Orange Belt Railway as it
reached its terminus in St. Petersburg.
PUBLIC DOMAIN EXTRACTION OF A MAP FROM
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
Below: Those who visited
Espiritu Santo Springs in the late
1800s enjoyed the waters emanating
from the artesian spa, afternoons
fishing along Old Tampa Bay, and
harvesting a bounty of crops and
citrus grown west of the settlement.
This community, also known as
Green Springs for awhile, later took
the name Safety Harbor.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Chapter 3 ✦ 13

Clockwise, starting from the top left:
Solomon Smith Coachman’s store
supplied the growing community
of Clearwater.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Before his death in 1892, John
Williams oversaw the construction of
an impressive home on the grove he
shared with his wife, Sarah. During
the early 1900s, this home became
part of a structure known as the
Manhattan Hotel.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Incorporated in 1905, the small
municipality of Largo grew as the
citrus industry thrived. The dirt paths
seen in this picture gave way to paved
roads by the 1910s.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
The Detroit Hotel, St. Petersburg’s
first destination for tourists, opened in
1888. This image shows the hotel as it
appeared around 1900. Owners of this
landmark structure have significantly
modified it since then. The building
still occupies a prominent location
along Central Avenue between
Second and Third Streets.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
A view of the Ozona area in the late
1890s reveals a small hamlet near the
railroad line.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
With plans for a railroad in the works, William
Alexander Belcher, a Hillsborough County member
of the Florida House of Representatives living in
the Bay View area, proposed an 1886 measure to
remove the Pinellas peninsula from Hillsborough
and form a separate county named “Gulf County.”
Senator Joseph B. Wall of Tampa killed this separation
measure. Although this effort failed, the seeds
were planted. A person who later helped this
movement take shape in the early 1900s arrived
from Georgia in 1886. Solomon Smith Coachman
played a role in the construction of many buildings
in the Clearwater area during the late 1800s. He
built one of the first brick buildings in Pinellas in
1894. Coachman purchased the James P. McMullen
homestead in 1902 and became an early advocate
for independence from Hillsborough and for
Clearwater becoming the county seat of Pinellas.
By 1887 the Orange Belt Railway reached the
small and remote settlements of upper Pinellas,
including Tarpon Springs and Yellow Bluff (now
Ozona). As the railroad moved south, royalty
arrived near Lake Tarpon when George Sutherland-
Leveson-Gower, a cousin of Queen Victoria with
the title of the Duke of Sutherland, came to
Florida’s west coast in the mid-1880s. “Sutherland,”
the original name given to Palm Harbor, was selected
to honor the Duke’s presence in the region.
The railroad took a notable and historic turn in
1887 when negotiations between Peter Demens’s
agent and John and Sarah Williams led to an
agreement in which Demens would receive 250
acres along the present-day waterfront of downtown
St. Petersburg if he steered his Orange Belt
Railway to the Williams’s holdings rather than
Disston’s lands in Gulfport. As the railroad
reached this site, the handful of folks living in the
area signed a petition approved by the Post Office
Department to make “St. Petersburg” the official
name of the settlement in honor of the Russian
city Demens once called home.
As St. Petersburg’s few residents prepared for
regularly scheduled service of the Orange Belt to
begin in June 1888, Henry Scharrer, a native of
Switzerland, arrived on Caladesi (Hog) Island after
setting sail from Tampa and encountering a storm
while approaching Dunedin Pass. After exploring
the island, he began the process of gaining title
to the island. Meanwhile, English native Robert
Leach arrived in the Oakhurst area near Seminole
and developed groves along the mainland close to
Boca Ciega Bay. That same year, Largo’s post office
14 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

egan operations with Malcolm McMullen serving
as postmaster and Peter Demens’s Detroit Hotel
opened for business in the sparse landscape of
what would become the “Sunshine City.”
The railroad connected the Pinellas peninsula
with the outside world in 1888. However, Demens
suffered financial challenges from the outset. In
June 1889, one year after service began, the narrow
gauge railroad began offering discount trips from
other Florida destinations as a way to increase
business. Demens’s agents claimed that the cooler
summer breezes found at “St. Petersburg-by-the-
Sea” made lower Pinellas a cool place in a hot
state. Few believed the hype. Facing an insurmountable
debt, Demens had to forfeit his ownership
of the line before the end of the decade, and
Henry Plant soon took possession of the railroad.
The locomotive did bring African American settlers
to Pinellas who came in search of work on the
railroad and in the groves. The construction of the
Orange Belt Railway required laborers who hailed
from other areas, including more than 100 African
American workers and family members who followed
the railroad to its terminus at St. Petersburg.
South of the tracks and west of Dr. Martin Luther
King (Ninth) Street, Leon Cooper owned land
that became known as Cooper’s Quarters, an
early settlement for African Americans. Families
of African ancestry also started to arrive from
Key West, the Bahamas, and other areas of the
Caribbean to work in the early sponge industry
based at Tarpon.
In 1891, John K. Cheyney formed the Anclote
and Rock Island Sponge Company with support
from Hamilton Disston’s business interests. The
creation of this company was an important step
for Tarpon as it became an important center for
the sponge diving industry in Florida. The following
year, a Dunedin resident introduced the
first named variety of grapefruit grown in the
United States, Duncan grapefruit. Within twenty
years, groves blanketed much of the peninsula,
with a large concentration in the area surrounding
Largo, incorporated in 1905, as a community
known as “Citrus City.”
A growing population sought an increased
level of governance. On February 29, 1892,
voters approved a measure to incorporate
St. Petersburg as a town by a vote of fifteen to
eleven. The two major political factions at the
time were the Open-Salooners and Anti-Salooners,
the “wets” and the “drys”; the “drys” initially held
control. In early March 1892, St. Petersburg’s
young government passed its first ordinance,
calling for “protection of peace and morals” and
also approved a measure outlawing the “running
at large of hogs within the corporate limits of the
town.” In 1893, the first women’s organization of
the city, the Park Improvement Association, came
together to sponsor improvements at Williams
Park, then known as “City Park.” Members funded
the construction of a fence to keep livestock
away from the park and raised money to
build the first Williams Park bandstand. By the
Above: Although those living along the
Pinellas frontier encountered more
than their share of difficulties, they
occasionally set aside their farm
tools for moments of recreation. The
players who gathered in Clearwater
for this team photograph during the
1890s certainly “dressed” the part.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Bottom, left: A streetcar railway
connected St. Petersburg and Gulfport
in April 1905. Before it was known as
Gulfport, settlements in this area of
southern Pinellas went by other
names, including Bonifacio, Disston
City, and Veteran City. Although
Hamilton Disston had hoped to create
a major urban center at this location,
Peter Demens’s shifting of the Orange
Belt Railway changed the fate of both
St. Petersburg and Gulfport in the
late 1880s.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Bottom, right: Visitors from Michigan
gathered at the original bandstand in
Williams Park shortly after its
construction in the mid-1890s.
Members of the Woman’s Town
Improvement Association raised funds
to build this structure and improve the
park. A replica of this bandstand
exists at Heritage Village.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Chapter 3 ✦ 15

Clockwise, starting from the top left:
Tropical storms and hurricanes have
the potential to reshape the coastline.
This section of roadway near Indian
Rocks and Haven Beach washed out
after hurricane force winds pummeled
the coastline.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Opened in January 1897, the
Hotel Belleview—later renamed the
Belleview Biltmore—became Henry
Plant’s signature structure along the
bluffs south of Clearwater. Henry’s
son, Morton Plant, became a leader in
Clearwater during the early 1900s.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE NELSON
POYNTER MEMORIAL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF
SOUTH FLORIDA ST. PETERSBURG.
Early establishments, such as
the St. Petersburg Novelty Works,
sustained the small community of
St. Petersburg in the years before the
First World War.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
An early fair came to St. Petersburg
shortly after 1900.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Early residents and tourists often had
exciting confrontations with the
animals that lived just beyond
their dwellings.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
first decade of the 1900s, vibrant Woman’s Town
Improvement Associations in St. Petersburg
and Tarpon Springs offered women a chance to
lobby in the political sphere nearly twenty years
before the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution permitted them to cast ballots.
Agriculture and aquaculture remained more
important than tourism. Before locomotives
brought tourists, they were instrumental in
reducing the shipping times of crops to distant
markets. Terrible freezes in December 1894 and
February 1895 did substantial damage to local
crops, however, hurting the local economy.
With ridership falling and crops in peril, the
syndicate that had taken control of the Orange
Belt decided to transfer it to Henry Plant, the
shipping and railroad magnate who had brought
the rails to Tampa. Plant’s control of the former
Orange Belt marked one of the earliest salvos in
the St. Petersburg/Tampa, Pinellas/Hillsborough
rivalries. Many people assume that the bantering
across the bay began with the decision to
put the University of South Florida’s first campus
in Hillsborough, or the supremacy of Tampa
International Airport after it opened in 1971, or
perhaps in the simmering debates over the best
location for major league sports franchises. This
rivalry actually came into existence before the
first railroad spike had its first speck of rust.
In January 1897 the
elegant Belleview Biltmore
Hotel officially opened.
This hotel became the site for one of the earliest
regional rivalries. With his opulent Tampa Bay
Hotel (now the University of Tampa) adorning
the western side of the Hillsborough River in
Tampa, Plant wanted to build another signature
hotel at the end of the Orange Belt Railway
in St. Petersburg. After St. Petersburg’s residents
scoffed at his plans, Plant acquired the site in the
Belleair area and construction began on what
was originally known as the Hotel Belleview in
1895. Before the end of the century, articles in
Tampa newspapers began complaining about the
quality of water on the Pinellas side of the bay,
while those arriving in St. Petersburg on Plant’s
steamships received offers to taste water that was
“better than in Tampa.” Whether its drinking
water or the location of baseball stadiums, the
tug-o-war has continued ever since!
16 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

Distant events did promote regional identity,
however. The explosion of the U.S.S. Maine in
Havana’s harbor in February 1898 placed the
United States and Spain on a path leading towards
war. The Tampa Bay region had established strong
connections to Cuba, a colony of the Spanish
empire at the time, and many locals supported
Cuban independence from Spain. In late April,
the United States formally declared war on Spain,
officially beginning hostilities known either as the
Spanish-American War or the War of 1898. The
Tampa Bay region hosted approximately 30,000
troops during this brief war, including nearly
16,000 that embarked from Port Tampa on June
7. Important legacies of the war were the expansion
of military facilities on Egmont Key and the
creation of nearby Fort DeSoto on Mullet Key.
At the dawn of the twentieth century, new
communities took shape. George Lizotte opened
the first hotel at Pass-a-Grille. City leaders in
St. Petersburg began to explore the possibilities
of a deepwater harbor in September 1900. By
late 1901, Frank Allston Davis launched the
St. Petersburg and Gulf Railway Company with
Jacob Disston and George Gandy. Within a
couple of years, a streetcar line took shape that
would connect various areas of St. Petersburg
and extend to the Gulfport Casino, where
passengers could then board a boat for
excursions to Pass-a-Grille. In 1902 the first
tourist or state society, representing winter visitors
from Illinois, was established in St. Petersburg, a
precursor to the springtime celebration that
would become known internationally as the
Festival of States. That same year, the Clearwater
Pier Company opened the first public dock in that
city at the foot of Cleveland Street.
Fifteen years after the Orange Belt had first
arrived, St. Petersburg officially incorporated as a
city in June 1903. Before the end of the year, a
former salt water taffy maker from Rhode Island,
Noel A. Mitchell, transformed himself into an
important promoter of St. Petersburg and the
nearby Pinellas beaches, helping to establish
the city’s chamber of commerce. Known as the
“Sand Man,” Mitchell’s legacy extended beyond
St. Petersburg’s city limits, even including remote
beach sites near Johns Pass by the 1910s.
Beaches and coastal areas became important
tourist destinations, but also provided rich
harvests from the Gulf. John M. Cocoris, a sponge
agent who first came from his native Greece
to America in 1895, received financial support
from John Cheyney that allowed him to bring the
first team of Greek sponge divers to Tarpon in
1905. Indian Rocks Beach’s first tourist hotel, the
Knox Hotel, opened for business that same year.
As tourists arrived, the need for improved
roadways sparked outrage with the unsympathetic
commissioners in Tampa, the seat of
Hillsborough County. For example, in 1906,
county officials offered a referendum to issue
bonds for improved roads. To get residents of
Western Hillsborough to support the measure,
Tampa’s leaders pledged that they would include
better roads to the coast. Instead of improving
roads in upper Pinellas, however, they spent
most of the funds on roads around Tampa. Their
misdeeds helped to fuel the movement to create
an independent Pinellas County.
Angered by Tampa’s lack of concern for
Western Hillsborough, W. L. Straub, the editor of
the St. Petersburg Times, printed an appeal known
as the “Pinellas Declaration of Independence” in
his newspaper on
Top, left: The Gulfport Casino served
as a transfer point between the
electric trolley system that connected
St. Petersburg and Gulfport and the
boats that ferried passengers to
Pass-a-Grille. The structure shown
in this postcard was destroyed during
the vicious October 1921 hurricane.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Top, right: Bathers along the beach at
Pass-a-Grille wore modest attire in
the early 1900s.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE NELSON
POYNTER MEMORIAL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF
SOUTH FLORIDA ST. PETERSBURG.
Bottom, left: Construction of Fort
DeSoto began along Mullet Key after
the United States defeated Spain in
the War of 1898. During the first
decade of the twentieth century, the
fort served as an active outpost to
protect the mouth of Tampa Bay. After
1910 federal authorities abandoned
the fort. Most of the wooden
structures fell into disrepair long
before the War Department used
parts of the island as a practice
bombing range during World War II.
The mortars at the fort never fired
during periods of war.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAMES A. SCHNUR.
Bottom, right: The expansion of the
sponge industry after Greek divers
came to Tarpon in 1905 led to new
business enterprises in the city and a
bountiful harvest of sponges.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Chapter 3 ✦ 17

Top, left: A band played along
Cleveland Street in downtown
Clearwater during the late spring
of 1910.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Top, right: A terrible fire during the
early morning hours of June 24, 1910
led to the destruction of much of
Clearwater’s business district between
Fort Harrison and Osceola Avenues.
After the fire, brick buildings replaced
wooden ones that had burned to
the ground.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Middle: The Florida Methodist
Conference moved the Florida
Seminary to Sutherland, present-day
Palm Harbor, in 1902. Renamed
Southern College in 1906, the
institution occupied a location with
a commanding view of Sutherland
Bayou. A fire on January 29, 1921
destroyed most of the buildings on
campus, forcing students to move
temporarily to sparsely populated
Clearwater Beach. Shortly thereafter,
the school moved to Lakeland and
became Florida Southern College.
This image of the baseball team shows
the squad just before the college left
the Palm Harbor area.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Bottom, left and right: During the
battles to gain independence from
Hillsborough, William L. Straub used
his newspaper, the St. Petersburg
Times, as a platform to advocate for
separation. Straub even drew editorial
cartoons to make his case for the
creation of Pinellas County.
One-hundred years after Pinellas
became a separate county, the
St. Petersburg Times rebranded itself
as the Tampa Bay Times.
IMAGES IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN
FROM THE FORMER ST. PETERSBURG TIMES,
APRIL 11 AND APRIL 18, 1911.
February 23, 1907. Straub argued that “the
organization of Pinellas County would not cost
its people any more than they are paying now”
to Tampa. In response to growing sentiments
for independence fueled in part by Straub’s
Declaration, state Representative W. W. K. Decker
of Tarpon Springs encouraged the House of
Representatives to pass a division bill. There was
some hope that Senator James E. Crane of Tampa
would push the bill through the Senate because
he had served as the first mayor of Clearwater
and had lived on the Pinellas side for many years.
However, Crane yielded to pressure from Tampa
and prevented the bill from moving forward.
This issue became a focal point of the 1908
legislative elections in Hillsborough County.
A bridge project launched in 1910 helped to
fuel the independence movement. Members of
the Hillsborough Board of County Commissioners
awarded a contract for a bridge across Long Bayou.
According to the agreement,
St. Petersburg business interests
paid one-quarter of the
approximate $10,000 cost for
this bridge, with Hillsborough
County covering the balance.
Known as the “Johns Pass”
bridge at the time because it
connected western St. Petersburg
with the Seminole area at a
point near the old Johns Pass settlement in
present-day War Veteran’s Memorial Park, this
structure occupied the site of the present-day
Bay Pines Bridge.
During the 1911 legislative session, as work
continued on this bridge, Straub and other local
officials successfully lobbied the legislature to
pass a bill creating Pinellas County. The bill won
approval despite opposition by Representative
Hugh Somerville of Dunedin and received
support from Senator Don C. McMullen to pass
the Senate. With Governor Albert W. Gilchrist’s
signature, this measure became Chapter 6247,
Laws of Florida, in May 1911. Independence
won? Not quite yet. The measure required voter
approval of those living in Western Hillsborough
during a November 14 referendum.
Finished during the summer of 1911,
the rickety bridge at Cross Bayou collapsed
in mid-September. As a man and his team
of mules reached the midpoint, the flimsy
structure toppled under the weight of the
animals due to poor construction. Angry
residents of the Pinellas peninsula demanded
answers from the distant county seat
in Tampa. They viewed this poorly constructed
bridge as the latest of many slaps
in their face. Officials in Tampa showed
indifference and voters in November
expressed their anger when they voted by a large
margin to support the division bill. Pinellas
County became a separate entity on January 1,
1912, thanks in part to a man and his mules.
18 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

CHAPTER 4
CITRUS GROVES, TRUCK FARMERS, AND LAND BOOMS (1912-1935)
Pinellas County came into existence on January 1, 1912, as Florida’s forty-eighth county. With the
majority of county commissioners representing the interests of upper Pinellas, a battle immediately
ensued over the location of the county seat. Citizens of St. Petersburg expected the largest municipality
to serve as the seat of government, but the majority of the five commissioners had other plans.
According to one story, when the two St. Petersburg-based commissioners demanded that residents
vote on the site of the county seat, the three north county commissioners chartered a boat and went
fishing beyond the twelve-mile limit until the mandamus expired. Although the bill that created
Pinellas County specified that Clearwater would serve as the county seat, some St. Petersburg leaders
considered Clearwater a temporary location. Clearwater residents protected the construction site of
the first courthouse with armed guards since rumors circulated that a south county contingent
planned to burn the structure to the ground before its completion.
Despite these battles regional unity did appear due to two notable events that began in 1914.
On January 1 the world’s first regularly scheduled commercial airline service commenced when pilot
Tony Jannus flew his Benoist aircraft between St. Petersburg and Tampa as the inaugural flight of the
St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line. Although the contract was for three months,
service continued into May, five weeks after the contract had ended. The first
passenger to join Jannus on his flight across the bay was Abraham C. Pheil,
a former mayor of St. Petersburg. Later that spring, Branch Rickey brought
the St. Louis Browns to Coffee Pot Park for the first organized season of spring
training baseball. Although the Browns (now the Baltimore Orioles) stayed
only for one year, the tradition of spring training baseball became a part of
Pinellas County’s history as other teams, including the Boston Braves, New York
Yankees, and St. Louis Cardinals, called St. Petersburg their springtime home.
Clearwater and Dunedin later became spring training venues, as well. The
arrival of Grapefruit League baseball coincided with the development of new
communities and improved infrastructure that supported a vibrant tourist trade.
Above: Members of the Citrus City
Growers Association gather at a
packing plant in 1929. Although the
Great Depression diminished the local
economy, bountiful harvests of citrus
did sustain the Largo area.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Below: The inaugural flight of the
St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line
marked the beginnings of commercial
aviation in January 1914.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Chapter 4 ✦ 19

Clockwise, starting from the top, left:
A January 1916 meeting of the
Pinellas Board of Trade touted the
agricultural potential of lands at the
new settlement of Pinellas Park.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Oldsmar, briefly known as Tampa
Shores (sometimes “Tampashores”)
also experienced the land boom of
the 1920s. Before the opening of the
Gandy Bridge in 1924, Oldsmar
became a convenient halfway-point
for the long drive around Tampa Bay.
To this day, two of the most important
thoroughfares in Oldsmar are Tampa
Road and St. Petersburg Drive.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Travelers along the roadway between
Tampa and Oldsmar would have
noticed this billboard as they
approached the Pinellas County line
during the land boom.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Charles M. Roser began to develop
Roser Park along the banks of Booker
Creek just south of the St. Petersburg
city limits in 1913. As magnificent
homes dotted the landscape,
St. Petersburg annexed Roser Park
as an early subdivision.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE NELSON
POYNTER MEMORIAL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF
SOUTH FLORIDA ST. PETERSBURG.
Horticulture sustained Dunedin’s
economy during the late 1800s and
early 1900s.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
New developments appeared on the landscape.
In November 1909, Frank Allston Davis and
other St. Petersburg developers who originally
hailed from Pennsylvania acquired approximately
10,000 acres of land in central Pinellas, near
the railroad, as part of a partnership known as
the Florida Association at Pinellas Park Farms.
They developed a small town, railroad depot,
and post office for Pinellas Park on “some of the
finest muck land in this section.” Pinellas Park
took shape as an agricultural settlement during
the 1910s. In 1917 leaders in the expanding
community of Green Springs, formerly known as
Espiritu Santo, decided to change their city’s name
again to avoid confusion with Green Cove Springs
in Clay County. This community along Old Tampa
Bay took the new name of Safety Harbor.
A short drive away, Ransom E. Olds, an automobile
manufacturer famous for the Oldsmobile
line of General Motors vehicles, obtained approximately
37,500 acres in both Pinellas and
Hillsborough Counties. He started the settlement
at Oldsmar and established the Olds Farm
Tractor Factory, attracting more than 1,000 other
residents from Lansing, Michigan, to the new
development at the eastern boundary of
Pinellas County. For awhile, derricks even
appeared in the Oldsmar area as prospectors
hoped to find oil. Harry E. Prettyman
became the public face of the development
during the 1920s, a time when some boosters
promoted Oldsmar as “The Wonder
Town of Pinellas.” The settlement fell upon
hard times, the factory closed, and other investors
took possession of the site by 1925 when it
became Tampa Shores. Soon thereafter, residents
renamed the community Oldsmar once again.
Similar to the development of Oldsmar as a site
for Michiganders, another north county development
launched in November 1925 also targeted
residents of Michigan. Detroiter Ephraim S.
Frischkorn, a longtime winter resident of Florida,
embarked upon a large-scale marketing campaign
to promote his Dunedin Isles development north
of the Dunedin city limits. With Robert S. Grant
as his agent in Dunedin, Frischkorn announced
plans for a $10 million development. Donald Ross
began to lay out the golf course at the country
club. Before the end of the year, Frischkorn had
chartered Pullman train cars bringing investors
and prospective residents from Michigan.
St. Petersburg may have lost the battle to serve
as the county seat, but it certainly became a magnet
for development. In 1912 the Bayboro area
became the first subdivision added to the original
plat. Charles M. Roser launched his Roser Park
subdivision along Booker Creek, encouraging further
residential and commercial development in
the Bayboro area. Meanwhile, Frank Roberts
Kennedy began an aggressive marketing campaign
for lands he owned in the Big Bayou area. He sold
20 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

these lands as part of the Grand View Park subdivision
that existed between Big Bayou and Lake
Maggiore. C. Perry Snell, developer of much of
the Old Northeast, expanded his holdings by the
1920s. On October 14, 1925, he announced the
opening of his Snell Isle development along Coffee
Pot Bayou. The following day, his agents recorded
nearly $2 million in sales. Snell and other developers
in St. Petersburg benefitted from the wise
decision by city leaders to transform much of
the waterfront from downtown St. Petersburg to
Coffee Pot Bayou into public park space. During a
period when smoke belched from stacks in many
cities across America, St. Petersburg was rare in
that it developed as a city without industry. The
city’s trolley line reached north and south of downtown,
and a new terminus came to the Jungle area
of western St. Petersburg by the end of 1913.
The Jungle area became an early transfer point
to new beach settlements. H. Walter Fuller purchased
much of Treasure Island for $800 in 1913.
In February 1914, St. Petersburg developer Noel A.
Mitchell acquired lands north of Johns Pass from
George Roberts with plans to develop “Mitchell
Beach.” Albert B. Archibald later controlled lands
on both sides of Johns Pass, creating his “Coney
Island” development in present-day Treasure Island
and establishing the Madeira Holding Company for
lands on the north side of the pass. Although an
abundance of mosquitoes and a lack of potable
water hindered development, Mitchell, Archibald,
and others ran regular boat service from the Jungle
to Johns Pass to entice investors before bridges
connected the beaches with the mainland.
Early bridges to empty beaches spanned the
bay by the mid-1910s. A narrow wooden toll
bridge connected downtown Clearwater with
Clearwater Beach. The McMullen and Hardage
families opened the first automobile bridge
between Indian Rocks and Anona in November
1916. William D. “Bill” McAdoo opened the first
Clockwise, starting from the top, left:
Workers constructed the first bridge
across Johns Pass in the 1920s,
allowing automobiles to travel across
the pass between the future cities of
Madeira Beach and Treasure Island.
At the time of this photograph, sand
dominated the shoreline of the pass.
This image captures a view from the
Treasure Island side.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE BURGERT
BROTHERS PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION, TAMPA-
HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY SYSTEM.
Cars parked at businesses along the
beach side of Indian Rocks at
The Narrows.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
The Tampa and Gulf Coast Railroad
began regular service between Pinellas
and Tampa in 1914. The second
railroad to come to Pinellas, this line
opened much of the Seminole area to
citrus cultivation. A spur line to
Indian Rocks brought wealthy Tampa
residents over for gatherings along
the shoreline.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
A segment of a 1913 soil map for
Pinellas County clearly illustrates the
numerous lakes that once existed
along the lower peninsula.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Chapter 4 ✦ 21

Clockwise, starting from the top:
Many sections of coastal islands
remained uninhabited even after the
land boom came to Pinellas in the
1920s. This photograph marks the
location of the proposed Seminole
Beach development. This remote tract
remained uninhabited until Charles E.
Redington acquired parcels in the
1930s. Currently part of Redington
Beach, this view looks across Boca
Ciega Bay towards Seminole.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE BURGERT
BROTHERS PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION, TAMPA-
HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY SYSTEM.
bridge linking western St. Petersburg at Pasadena
with the Gulf Beaches in February 1919. Former
St. Petersburg Mayor Frank Fortune Pulver
purchased the structure in May 1920 and had
it renamed Pulver Bridge.
Voters passed a bond measure in June 1923
that allowed for the expansion of Pinellas
County’s road network as the real estate boom
hit full force. County officials awarded contracts
for construction to begin by December 1923 on
nearly 100 miles of improved county roads.
These new roads promoted truck farming in the
Seminole, Largo, and Pinellas Park areas that
nourished the real estate boom of the 1920s.
Residents of some neighborhoods petitioned for
the creation of special road districts and bridge
districts to fund improvements that would connect
to the county road network. Between 1924
and 1926, twelve special districts came into
existence. During this time, the original Corey
Causeway opened along a new route that
connected present-day St. Pete Beach with the
Davista area now known as South Pasadena. In
1924, Thomas J. Rowe acquired his first real
estate in the Pass-a-Grille area when he bought
eighty acres that later became Don CeSar Place
and the site of his opulent hotel, the Don CeSar,
that opened in 1928. Other nearby developments
included the Gasparilla Beach and
Ruppert Beach subdivisions near Pass-a-Grille
and Pat Sergi’s Lido Beach development southeast
of Dolphin Village.
Clearwater’s first ‘skyscraper,’ the
Fort Harrison Hotel, took shape in the
mid-1920s.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Started as a celebration of George
Washington’s birthday, the annual
Festival of States became a popular
springtime event during the peak of
St. Petersburg’s tourist season.
This small float participated in a late
1920s parade, passing the recentlyopened
Vinoy Park Hotel.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE NELSON
POYNTER MEMORIAL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF
SOUTH FLORIDA ST. PETERSBURG.
Frenzied activity came to
St. Petersburg’s downtown as the land
boom took shape during the 1920s.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE NELSON
POYNTER MEMORIAL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF
SOUTH FLORIDA ST. PETERSBURG.
22 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

Clockwise, starting from the top:
Thomas Rowe opened his Don CeSar
Hotel in 1928, just as the land boom
came to an end. Less than fifteen
years later, this pink-colored beacon
along the beach became a place for
wounded soldiers to convalesce after
the Veteran’s Administration acquired
the structure. After the government
vacated the structure in the late 1960s,
the “Don” was purchased in 1972 and
reopened as a hotel a year later.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE NELSON
POYNTER MEMORIAL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF
SOUTH FLORIDA ST. PETERSBURG.
David S. Welch, a St. Petersburg entrepreneur
who came to the area to establish a shipping line
to Cuba, purchased Wall Springs from the Wall
family. Also involved in road improvement
projects in the Pinellas Park and Seminole areas,
as well as the Gulf Beaches, Welch opened the
first toll-free bridge to the lower Pinellas beaches
when his causeway connected Madeira Beach to
the mainland near Bay Pines. The first bridge
across Johns Pass also opened. North of Madeira,
Charles E. Redington platted beach communities
by the mid-1930s, more than a decade after
plans to establish the “Seminole Beach” development
had sputtered. The Bath Club and other
developments in this area took shape after
engineers closed Indian Pass, a waterway that
existed before 1930 near the Redington Shores
Beach Access at 182nd Avenue.
The Good Roads Movement hit
Pinellas by the early 1920s. A 1923
referendum provided funds to build a
network of county roadways between
the scattered municipalities. This
image shows workers constructing a
roadway near Largo.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
This map shows the main pathways
between settlements shortly after
independence from Hillsborough.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Opened in 1926 as the first free
bridge to the lower Pinellas beaches,
the Welch Causeway promoted
settlement along Madeira and the
Redington beaches. Shown here in the
mid-1940s, this narrow span became
a tight fit as beach towns grew in the
1950s. A new span replaced this
bridge in 1962.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Crowds assemble at Pass-a-Grille’s
casino and beach in November 1922.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE NELSON
POYNTER MEMORIAL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF
SOUTH FLORIDA ST. PETERSBURG.
Chapter 4 ✦ 23

Top: Ceremonies to dedicate the
Million Dollar Pier took place on
Thanksgiving Day, 1926. The pier
quickly became a popular meeting
place and an instant symbol of the
city. As St. Petersburg sought to
reinvent its image during the 1960s,
city leaders considered the
Mediterranean architecture of the
casino building outdated and out-oftouch.
They authorized the demolition
of the casino structure in 1967. The
inverted pyramid that rose in its place
opened in January 1973.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE NELSON
POYNTER MEMORIAL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF
SOUTH FLORIDA ST. PETERSBURG.
Middle: George S. Gandy, developer
of the Gandy Bridge, inspects dredging
operations on the Pinellas side of the
approach in 1922. The Gandy Bridge
opened in November 1924 as a toll
road and became the first bridge to
span Tampa Bay between Pinellas and
Hillsborough Counties.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE NELSON
POYNTER MEMORIAL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF
SOUTH FLORIDA ST. PETERSBURG.
Bottom, left: Jay Starkey’s land
holdings once included a substantial
amount of acreage between Park
Boulevard, Ulmerton Road, and the
east side of Lake Seminole. He and
others used the area as an open range
before the 1950s and developed a
large hog farm. By the 1960s, Starkey
moved much of his agribusiness to
Pasco County.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Bottom, right: After the draining of
Lake Largo, the former lakebeds
became a great spot to grow crops.
An abundant harvest of upland rice
appears in this photograph taken in
the 1910s. The small path along the
left side of the image is currently the
site of Ulmerton Road between Starkey
Road and Seminole Boulevard.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
On September 6, 1924, a bridge connecting
Safety Harbor and Oldsmar opened, shortening
the traveling distance to Tampa and marking
the first bridge across Old Tampa Bay open to
vehicular traffic. An improved “million-dollar”
free causeway connected Clearwater’s beach and
mainland by the mid-1920s, opening the island
to greater development.
Of course, the “Granddaddy” of bridges in
the Tampa Bay region made its public debut on
November 20, 1924, when Gandy Bridge opened
to the public, marking the completion of the
first bridge to span Tampa Bay between Pinellas
and Hillsborough Counties. George S. “Dad”
Gandy first considered the possibility of a span
across Tampa Bay in 1903, but construction did
not begin until 1920. Constructed as a toll
road, this bridge remained a private
roadway—similar to the Ben T. Davis
(now Courtney Campbell) Causeway that
opened in June 1934—until federal
orders lifted the tolls during World War II.
Railroads also promoted tourism and
agribusiness. Regular passenger service
between Tampa and Pinellas County
began in 1914 on the second railroad to
arrive on in Pinellas, the Tampa and Gulf
Coast Railway. Tracks were established south of
Clearwater towards Largo, Seminole, the Bay Pines
area, and ultimately St. Petersburg. By the end of
1914, a spur of the Tampa and Gulf Coast also ran
across citrus groves and the intracoastal waterway
from Largo towards Anona and Indian Rocks
Beach, reaching the present-day site of Kolb Park.
Soon thereafter, residents of Tampa began to visit
Indian Rocks in growing numbers and the community
became a popular recreational destination.
The agricultural bounty along railroad lines
in Largo, Lealman, Pinellas Park, Seminole, and
north Pinellas encouraged women to nudge their
husbands to promote these successful endeavors
on a larger stage. In late January 1917 the
Woman’s Club of Largo presented the first Pinellas
24 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

Top to bottom:
Even during the economic downturn
of the Great Depression, Cleveland
Street in downtown Clearwater
continued to attract crowds in 1934.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
County Fair. Held at Largo’s town
hall and the adjacent Ulmer Park,
the success of the initial fair
encouraged some Largo area leaders
such as Dr. Bob McMullen,
Jesse Ancil Walsingham, John S.
Taylor, and Marion Wheeler Ulmer
to offer their support.
Indeed, even during the height of the land
boom, agriculture remained a vital part of the
Pinellas economic engine. John S. Taylor and
other nearby growers established the Peninsula
Packing Company and other citrus enterprises.
Residents near Lake Largo decided that this 500-
acre fresh water lake that once existed between
the site of Largo Central Park, Starkey Road, and
south towards Ulmerton Road should be drained
and repurposed as a site for truck farming. In
late 1915, local authorities began to sell bonds to
fund the Lake Largo-Cross Bayou Drainage Project.
Through a network of drainage basins, canals,
and other land modifications, engineers planned
to drain much of the lake and convert the rich
soil and muck into cropland. Many canals also
offered flood control for residential areas. In June
1917, Walsingham became president of the newly
formed Largo Truck
Growers’ Organization,
an important agricultural
partnership in
central Pinellas.
As young men
fought in distant battles
during the First
World War, Pinellas
farmers went to war
with another enemy: Texas fever ticks. In
November 1917, one year before Armistice Day,
Pinellas became the first Florida county to try to
make cattle dipping mandatory as a way of combating
the ticks. County commissioners also supported
a measure to close the open range. Before
the Pinellas measure was passed, branded cattle
sometimes roamed upwards of eighty miles, often
beyond county boundaries, in search of grasses;
Located away from the downtown
hotels and restaurants, Peppertown
nevertheless played an important role
in St. Petersburg’s development.
African Americans from this
overcrowded settlement near presentday
Tropicana Field served as an
important workforce that kept the
downtown establishments in business.
Known as an area where locals grew
many types of peppers, Peppertown
had many homes that lacked running
water or sanitary systems.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE NELSON
POYNTER MEMORIAL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF
SOUTH FLORIDA ST. PETERSBURG.
“Handsome” Jack Taylor designed
the Rolyat Hotel (“Taylor” spelled
backwards) in the Pasadena Estates
area, now part of Gulfport. Taylor
walked away as the land boom ended,
abandoning the structure. The hotel
later served as the location of Florida
Military—a preparatory school—and
Stetson University’s College of Law.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE NELSON
POYNTER MEMORIAL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF
SOUTH FLORIDA ST. PETERSBURG.
The railroad depot along First Avenue
South in St. Petersburg became a busy
place in the Sunshine City during the
land boom.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE NELSON
POYNTER MEMORIAL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF
SOUTH FLORIDA ST. PETERSBURG.
Chapter 4 ✦ 25

Clockwise, starting from the top, left:
A boat filled with sponges arrives at
Tarpon’s docks during the late 1920s.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE NELSON
POYNTER MEMORIAL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF
SOUTH FLORIDA ST. PETERSBURG.
Members of the McMullen family
once herded their cattle along the
open range in the Four Corners area.
Also known as Dutchman’s Corner,
the quaint intersection shown in this
1930s image has changed greatly.
Currently the junction of U.S.
Highway 19 and East Bay Drive/
Roosevelt Boulevard, this intersection
became one of the most congested
spots in the Tampa Bay area by the
1980s. This view looks west from
East Bay Drive towards Roosevelt.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
The bandstand at Williams Park
became a popular gathering place for
concerts in St. Petersburg.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE NELSON
POYNTER MEMORIAL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF
SOUTH FLORIDA ST. PETERSBURG.
The St. Petersburg Coliseum opened
in November 1924.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE NELSON
POYNTER MEMORIAL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF
SOUTH FLORIDA ST. PETERSBURG.
The Vinoy Park Hotel opened in
January 1926 along the North Yacht
Basin. Constructed on the east side of
Beach Drive north of Straub Park,
much of site was reclaimed from
Tampa Bay through a massive
dredging operation.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE NELSON
POYNTER MEMORIAL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF
SOUTH FLORIDA ST. PETERSBURG.
with the range closed in Pinellas—it remained
open in much of Florida until the fence law
passed in the 1949 legislature—farmers had to
bring food and water to the cattle pens instead of
letting their cattle freely roam.
Another important war began in the 1930s as
developers of beach communities battled against
the mosquito. Virgil C. Almand, Thomas Rowe,
and David Welch established the Anti-Mosquito
Association as a way of gaining public support for
the creation of a mosquito control district. This
proposal received voter approval in a referendum
after the association successfully obtained nearly
3,000 signatures on a petition. Almand, Rowe, and
Welch served as members of the commission and
focused most of their mosquito eradication efforts
in St. Petersburg and along the Gulf Beaches.
At this time, residents along the small settlements
of the barrier islands used a variety of
methods to combat
swarms of mosquitoes.
During the
summer months, some
people even applied a coat
of motor oil or kerosene
to the screens on their
windows and doors. The
mosquitoes died upon
the screens in such great
numbers that residents
would have to take down their screens and “wash”
them with gasoline before re-hanging them.
Some battles left collateral damage. Although
developers tried to tame the environment through
pest eradication efforts, dredging, and the draining
of lakes, Mother Nature sometimes prevailed.
In October 1921, a notable hurricane hit the area.
It devastated the first Gulfport Casino, along with
many other waterfront structures. The hurricane
also destroyed the bridge across Long Bayou near
Bay Pines and another one at Safety Harbor.
Agricultural damage was extensive, especially in
Largo, where John S. Taylor estimated that he
lost ninety percent of his citrus crop, more than
150,000 boxes of fruit. The hurricane also
damaged the pier at Safety Harbor, ripping the
dance hall at the end of the pier away and floating
it into the town where it damaged some buildings
26 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

Clockwise, starting from the top, left:
as it was destroyed, too. For awhile, it was
thought that all of Pass-a-Grille had washed
away. “Hurricane Pass,” a channel carved during
this hurricane, divided Hog Island into two
separate islands, Caladesi and Honeymoon.
Political contests redefined the landscape as
well. Although the Democratic Party continued
to dominate Florida politics as it had since
Reconstruction, the arrival of transplants from the
Midwest and Northeast states tilted Pinellas politics
in a new direction. In November 1928, Albert
R. Welsh won election as the first Republican senator
to gain legislative office as a member of his
party since the 1872 election. Gladstone R. Beattie
won election as the first Republican sheriff
in Florida since Reconstruction after a bitter
campaign between him and Roy Booth, his
Democratic challenger. Though neither Welsh
nor Beattie served an entire term of office, their
victories marked an important turning
point as Republicans won many
county offices for the first time in a
Florida county since Reconstruction.
Florida’s land boom imploded by
late 1926. Long before the rest of the
United States suffered the calamity
of the Great Depression, Pinellas
County’s real estate market faltered
in 1928, leaving many investors
penniless and many developments
vacant or unfinished. Years of austerity
followed as tourism declined and
businesses retrenched. By November
1932, the board of public instruction
decided to issue $50,000 in
scrip in $5 and $10 denominations
as a way to cover teachers’ salaries when it once
again had sufficient funds. The board also had
to sign a note after it could not afford to pay
its electric bill. By March of 1933, the situation
had become so bad that the school district
prohibited teachers from turning on electric
lights except during emergencies.
All was not doom and gloom, however. On
July 1931, county commissioners approved a
financing plan to pay $100,000 to acquire a site
at Seminole Point for the creation of a soldiers’
home, a facility that became the Bay Pines
Veterans Hospital. Dedication ceremonies took
place in March 1933 at the twenty-one acre Bay
Pines National Cemetery on the grounds shared
with the new hospital. The creation of Bay Pines
brought jobs to the area and—with war clouds
looming on the horizon—Bay Pines became an
important facility nestled among the pine trees
along Boca Ciega Bay and Long Bayou that
remains in service to this day.
Citrus crate labels used by Florida
packing houses often promoted their
local communities. John S. Taylor’s
operations helped to give Largo the
nickname of “Citrus City.”
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
An April 1931 fire obliterated
John S. Taylor’s packinghouse along
Bay Drive, just east of Seminole
Boulevard. Rather than despair,
Taylor and his crew built a new and
improved facility that opened the
following year.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE BURGERT
BROTHERS PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION, TAMPA-
HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY SYSTEM.
Many heroes of the game, including
Babe Ruth, enjoyed playing spring
training games in Pinellas County.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
The “Sunshine Girls,” a squad based
in St. Petersburg, posed for a
team portrait.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Chapter 4 ✦ 27

CHAPTER 5
WARTIME MOBILIZATION ALONG “PEERLESS PINELLAS” (1936-1945)
Top, left: New arrivals report for
duty in the United States Maritime
Service after stepping off the train in
downtown St. Petersburg. This scene
would repeat itself countless times
during World War II as more than
120,000 men came to the Sunshine
City to train in the Maritime Service
or the U.S. Army Air Corps.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE NELSON
POYNTER MEMORIAL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF
SOUTH FLORIDA ST. PETERSBURG.
Top, right: Troops training in
St. Petersburg during World War II
and local residents gather in front of
St. Mary’s Catholic Church at the
intersection of Fifth Avenue and
Fourth Street South. The surge of
recruits that trained in Florida
during the Second World War forever
transformed the Sunshine State.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Right: A common sight along
the shorelines of Clearwater and
Dunedin during the early 1940s, the
amphibious Roebling Alligators aided
military operations during the Second
World War. Vehicles tested by Marines
in Pinellas later appeared in the
battlefields of the Pacific.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
During World War II, all corners of the Sunshine State transformed to support the war effort. More
than 170 military installations, airfields, and training fields blanketed Florida. Civilian lookout posts
and blackouts along the coastline prepared for the threat of U-boats. Although wartime tourism
languished, frenzied activity covered Pinellas County during World War II. With the United States
Maritime Service Training Station at Bayboro Harbor, Pinellas Army Airfield, and the test site for the
Roebling Alligator in and around Dunedin, Pinellas mobilized for the fight against foreign fascism.
Many young recruits of the U.S. Army Air Corps trained in the area. After the war ended in 1945,
Pinellas County’s population expanded into new areas once occupied by groves.
New Deal projects laid the groundwork for military facilities long before the attack on Pearl
Harbor in December 1941. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a measure that established a Coast
Guard Air Station at Albert Whitted Airport in September 1933. In 1935 the Works Progress
Administration, a New Deal agency, added structures at this site. These facilities provided a sense of
security as World War II officially began in September 1939. By the fall of 1939, with Europe fully
engaged in war, the Coast Guard reopened a naval base at Bayboro Harbor. Planes from the Coast
Guard Air Station conducted anti-submarine patrols in the Gulf of Mexico.
On November 6, 1939, the United States Maritime Commission selected St. Petersburg’s bid for a
U.S. Maritime Service Training Station at Bayboro Harbor. In August 1939, St. Petersburg and Tampa
had submitted separate bids to host this center along the Gulf coast. One unsuccessful proposal called
for a facility at Fort DeSoto on Mullet Key; Tampa submitted sites along the current location of MacDill
Air Force Base. Shortly after city leaders received early word that their bid was selected, two training
ships arrived at the Coast Guard station while construction of the facility began in April 1940.
Dedication of the base took place in July 1941. This site along Bayboro Harbor continued to serve
as a Maritime base until March 1950, when federal authorities decommissioned the facility. Nearly
25,000 recruits passed through the installation.
The U.S. Army Air Corps had a substantial
presence in St. Petersburg during World War II.
In early 1942, nearly every hotel in the city was
commandeered by the United States Department of
War, predecessor to the Department of Defense, for
the Air Corps, precursor to the U.S. Air Force. Among
the larger hotels, only the Suwannee was available for
tourists. Of course, wartime rationing and restrictions
decimated tourism and even led to the cancellation of spring training baseball and the city’s popular
Festival of States parade, but St. Petersburg enjoyed crowds who marched to a different drumbeat: More
than 120,000 recruits passed through the city during the war years. Some stayed at hotels, while others
camped in temporary tent cities in the Tyrone and Jungle areas of western St. Petersburg.
28 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

Other areas of Pinellas also prepared for the
war. In March 1941, construction began on an
airport at High Point after President Roosevelt’s
administration approved a site of over 900
acres for an airport between St. Petersburg and
Clearwater. Although originally envisioned for
civilian purposes, the site was acquired by the
U.S. Army Air Corps in April 1942 and became
Pinellas Army Airfield. Used primarily as a training
site for P-40 Warhawks and P-51 Mustangs,
the field also served as a strategic location to
launch reconnaissance flights in search of German
submarines along the Gulf. The military returned
the facility to the county in December 1947 and
it became Pinellas International Airport, now
St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport.
Sites in upper Pinellas also played a significant
role in America’s war efforts long before Pearl
Harbor brought the United States into the conflict.
Donald Roebling hailed from the family that had
built the Brooklyn Bridge. During the mid-1930s,
Roebling experimented with a number of amphibious
prototypes for civilian use, but none of
them proved sufficient for operation on
land and water with the results he desired. In
early 1940, Roebling developed the Alligator
and tested this model in the area around
St. Joseph Sound and Clearwater Bay. Officials
from the Navy visited with Roebling in the
spring of 1940 and were impressed. They
returned in November with a request for 200
additional vehicles. Workers constructed the
first Alligators for military use in August 1941.
Before the end of World War II, more than 18,000
Alligators had entered service.
In May 1941 the first group of United States
Marines, forty in number, arrived in Dunedin to
train as war clouds loomed on the horizon. Twohundred
fifty soon followed. They had the responsibility
of learning how to maneuver the Roebling
Alligators coming from the factories in Dunedin
and Lakeland. The site of their base, the Harbor
View Villas subdivision near the intersection of
Curlew Road and Alternate Highway 19, has all
but disappeared into subdivisions today, but at
the time this area just east of Honeymoon Island
became a Marine facility that remained in operation
until August 1944. Between 1941 and 1943
the Dunedin Servicemen’s Lounge occupied a
spot in the old post office building as a place
where local residents supplied food and hostesses
provided a friendly face for the Marines
assigned to the barracks north of town.
Beaches played an important role in the
war effort. By this time, military authorities
had acquired the boom-era Don CeSar Hotel
on St. Pete Beach and transformed it into a
place for injured servicemen to convalesce.
Visits by the Sunshine City’s “Bomb-a-Dears”
lifted spirits of the war wounded at this
hotel, as well as during dances at the Million
Dollar Pier. Remote beach areas, including
much of the area of Belleair Beach and parts of
Mullet Key, served a different purpose as sites
where young pilots practiced their skills in
dropping bombs on deserted coastal venues.
Clockwise, starting from top, left:
During the early 1940s, many
sections of Oakhurst Road in the
Seminole and Largo areas had a
natural canopy cover.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Members of the United States
Maritime Service train in Vinoy Basin
during the mid-1940s. After the U.S.
Army Air Corps no longer needed
downtown hotels, a few—including
the Vinoy—became overflow barracks
for the Maritime Service. Note the tall
pine trees alongside the hotel.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE NELSON
POYNTER MEMORIAL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF
SOUTH FLORIDA ST. PETERSBURG.
The opening of the Jordan Park public
housing project in April 1940 brought
hope to African Americans living in
St. Petersburg’s overcrowded slums.
Although residential patterns remained
racially segregated for many years,
the new structures at Jordan Park
provided amenities—such as indoor
plumbing and electricity—not found
in many homes in the Gas Plant
district, Peppertown, and other
blighted areas.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE NELSON
POYNTER MEMORIAL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF
SOUTH FLORIDA ST. PETERSBURG.
Known as the “White Queen of the
Gulf,” the Belleview Biltmore and its
more than 400 rooms served as an
elegant wooden barracks for members
of the U.S. Army Air Corps after
government officials leased the
building during World War II.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Chapter 5 ✦ 29

Above: Members of the United States
Maritime Service march along
Central Avenue in St. Petersburg to
commemorate Armistice Day on
November 11, 1947. The Maritime
Service Training Station along
Bayboro Harbor closed operations less
than three years later.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE NELSON
POYNTER MEMORIAL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF
SOUTH FLORIDA ST. PETERSBURG.
Below: Members of the United States
Maritime Service stand at attention
atop one of the barracks at their base
along Bayboro Harbor. Albert Whitted
Airport appears in the background.
Although the Maritime Service was
not part of the military, it served a
vital purpose during World War II.
The Maritime Service protected
commercial ships that navigated the
open seas and faced regular attack
from Nazi submarines. Members of
the Maritime Service suffered a high
casualty rate.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE NELSON
POYNTER MEMORIAL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF
SOUTH FLORIDA ST. PETERSBURG.
The war transformed one remote beach from a
planned paradise for newlyweds into a site for war
production workers. Clinton Mozely Washburn,
a St. Petersburg winter resident, had bought the
northern section of Hog Island from Tampa
investors for $25,000 in 1938. By early 1940, he
had drawn up plans to transform this island into
Honeymoon Island, a place for the “exclusive use”
of honeymooning couples. Washburn said that he
would permit two-week visits to couples “of good
character.” His plans attracted the interest of Life
magazine in 1940. Approximately 250 couples
came to Honeymoon Island that year. The romantic
experiment ended after the United States entered
World War II, and the island became a place for
defense workers to enjoy rest and relaxation
beginning in 1942. War production workers from
a Cleveland, Ohio, defense plant enjoyed vacations
on the island as a reward for their efforts to
build aviation components. Thus, even as tourism
declined due to restrictions imposed during the
Second World War, Pinellas became a paradise for
some workers who contributed to the war effort.
For the few Asian Americans in Pinellas
during World War II, it was a paradise lost. While
German-American immigrants had melded
into the war effort against foreign fascism, those
of Japanese ancestry were more obvious by their
presence. Though small in number,
they were quickly targeted. Despite
their loyalty to the United States, the
proprietors of the Sone Gift Shop and
the Nikko Inn, two St. Petersburg
businesses with Japanese-American
owners, were sent to internment camps
on December 8, 1941. Other Asian
residents in Florida faced a similar fate.
One wartime liberation movement
happened close to home. In June 1943,
Governor Spessard Holland signed the
“Women’s Emancipation Bill” into law.
This bill, sponsored by Representative
Mary Lou Baker, gave married women
the right to manage their separate property, to enter
into contracts, to sue and be sued, to convey
property, and to execute documents. It also enabled
women in Florida to enter into contracts or partnerships
with their husbands. Though taken for
granted today, such rights were not provided under
Florida law at the time. Baker, a Pinellas resident,
the only female serving in the Florida legislature
during that time, and only the second woman
in the history of Florida to serve in the legislature,
had graduated from Clearwater High School in
1933. In 1942, she ran against incumbent Stanley
C. Minshall for a seat representing Pinellas County
in the Florida house and won the election. At the
time, even her own colleagues in the Pinellas
delegation avoided offering support for this bill.
Mary Lou Baker did not win passage of other
important bills, however. One bill she filed would
have permitted women to serve on juries. Baker
made a final stand, pleading, “Women on trial for
crime might be brought to trial before a woman
judge, prosecuted by a woman district attorney,
defended by a woman lawyer, brought to court
by a woman bailiff, and yet be forced to trial
before a jury of men.” At the end of World War II,
Florida remained one of only eight states that
barred women from juries. Women would not
win the right to serve on Florida juries until
1949, four years after Baker had left office.
Baker joined the ranks of many Pinellas
residents who did not fight in distant battlefields
yet still aided the war effort. Scrap drives and
victory gardens abounded. Another important
contribution involved nutrition: After off-and-on
attempts to develop an orange juice concentrate
with taste that would attract broad market appeal,
health concerns during the Second World War
actually moved this initiative forward. Most early
attempts resulted in a citrus concentrate that, when
reconstituted, tasted like dish water. The War Food
Administration contacted members of Dunedin’s
Skinner family about plans to send supplies of
their concentrate overseas to nourish families in
Europe deprived of Vitamin C. The Skinners could
transport as much Vitamin C in single shipment
of concentrate as they could in thirty ships full of
fresh oranges. By the end of the 1943-1944 growing
season, this enterprise had shipped more than
twenty-eight million cans of orange juice concentrate.
After the war, however, groves became a
casualty on the battle over development of Pinellas.
30 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

Left: The intersection of Park
Boulevard and Starkey Road seemed
like a remote location in the late
1940s. During the summer of 1949,
engineers constructed a dam along
Long Bayou (to the left of the
photograph) that transformed part
of the saltwater marshlands into a
freshwater body known as
Lake Seminole. Much of the portion
of Park Boulevard between Seminole
Boulevard and Lake Seminole Park
actually serves as a dam to separate
fresh and salt water habitats.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
CHAPTER 6
PROGRESSIVE PINELLAS AND THE FLORIDA DREAM (1946-1971)
After serving in the Navy during World War II, Al Repetto came home with citrus on his mind.
He started Orange Blossom Groves with his brother-in-law in 1946. Repetto’s holdings grew
substantially during the 1950s. Nearly sixty years later, in 2005, Repetto owned one of the last groves
operating in Pinellas County. Others thought of cows. Milton Whitfield Bryan and his wife, Pansy,
came from Tampa in 1940 to open a dairy on a 1,040 acre site between Largo and Pinellas Park.
They established their dairy to the east of Jay B. Starkey’s extensive farm holdings between Park
Boulevard and Ulmerton Road and carved a dirt path known as Bryan Dairy Road
to their business. By the late 1950s, Starkey had started to shift his operations to
Pasco County and the former dairy became the site of General Electric’s Pinellas
Plant, a major cold war defense complex.
Between the mid-1940s and the early 1970s, new entities sprouted alongside many
Pinellas County groves as trailer parks, subdivisions, and commercial establishments
dotted the landscape. New highways crisscrossed the mainland, finger islands
appeared along the estuaries, and developments decimated farmlands. Similar to the
disparity between rural north Florida and the urbanized peninsula during the 1950s,
the southern portions of Pinellas County—most notably the lower Gulf Beaches and
St. Petersburg—experienced the bulk of the growth during this period while much of
central and northeastern Pinellas remained undeveloped or agricultural in character.
While 9,500 acres of Pinellas lands remained under cultivation for citrus in 1953, the
extent of lands under cultivation in 1968 was reduced by nearly fifty percent.
New roadways hastened the postwar land boom. Leaders embarked upon an
aggressive campaign to improve infrastructure throughout the county. They chose this
path for practical reasons. As factories churned out automobiles after the war ended,
a car culture developed that promoted mobility and accessibility. Roadside attractions
in Florida became popular tourist destinations. New suburban neighborhoods
attracted families and retirees who lived farther away from the urban core.
Below: Developers marketed new
Pinellas communities heavily after
World War II. The photographer who
took the staged publicity photograph
for this brochure to tout the
Ridgewood Groves subdivision near
Seminole had to be innovative.
Since the oranges were still green at
the time of the picture, he ran to the
hardware store, purchased paint, and
actually painted the oranges before
the models struck a pose.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF
JACK SWENNINGSEN.
Chapter 6 ✦ 31

Clockwise, starting from the top, left:
This aerial illustrates the dredging
that took place in the late 1950s
along the approach to the Howard
Frankland Bridge. Now known as
Interstate 275, this highway carved
a path through St. Petersburg during
the 1960s and 1970s. Shown in this
southern view are (left to right)
the exits at Fourth Street, Ninth
(Dr. Martin Luther King) Street, and
Ulmerton Road. The highway ended
at this point during the 1960s.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Dedication ceremonies along the
Howard Frankland Bridge celebrated
the extension of the Interstate
Highway System into Pinellas County
in 1960. A second span of the bridge
was built three decades later as
traffic jams between Pinellas and
Hillsborough Counties have become
a daily ritual.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
This view looking westward
towards downtown Clearwater and
Clearwater Beach illustrates the lack
of tall buildings along Clearwater’s
beaches during the late 1950s.
The Island Estates subdivision did not
yet exist. After the Clearwater Pass
Bridge opened in December 1962 to
connect Sand Key to Clearwater
Beach, development along both sides
of the pass grew exponentially.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
This cabana, part of the Belleview
Biltmore property, was one of the few
developments along Sand Key in the
1950s. By the 1970s, condominiums
dotted both sides of Gulf Boulevard
and new communities appeared on
lands dredged from the bay.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Cheap gasoline and an abundance of vehicles
lessened the use of mass transit. Trolley service
on the last remaining routes of the streetcar
railway within St. Petersburg and Gulfport ended
at midnight on May 7, 1949. Even though
railroads brought the first stream of settlers to
St. Petersburg in 1888, by the 1950s the downtown
terminals caused colossal traffic headaches.
In 1959, the Seaboard Air Line moved its terminal
to a site just north of Gibbs High School. A few
years later, the Atlantic Coast Line relocated
its depot to a location a few miles
northwest of the downtown. Terminals in
other communities, such as Largo and
Pinellas Park, saw regular rail service end
as more cars appeared on the roads.
Bridges shortened distances. The original
Belleair Causeway opened to traffic in
May 1950, connecting Largo with Sand
Key. A new span connected Walsingham
Road with Indian Rocks Beach in June
1958. During the late 1950s, workers
extended Ulmerton Road—then a narrow
two-lane roadway—through the swampland
of present-day Feather Sound so it could
connect to a new expressway, Interstate 4. Later
changed to Interstate 275, the highway opened
between Ulmerton Road and Tampa in 1960 after
workers dredged the approach and built the
Howard Frankland Bridge. The continuation of
Interstate 275 into St. Petersburg and towards
southern Pinellas took place during the 1970s and
1980s. The first Clearwater Pass Bridge opened in
December 1962, connecting Clearwater Beach
with the northern tip of Sand Key. The Dunedin
Causeway allowed vehicles to drive directly to
Honeymoon Island beginning in December 1964.
By that time, the Pinellas Bayway and roadways
along Tierra Verde had also opened, permitting
visitors to drive to Fort DeSoto and enjoy the new
county park at that site.
Another bridge rose between Pinellas Point and
Manatee County in the early 1950s. With great
fanfare, the original span of the Sunshine Skyway
Bridge opened to traffic on September 6, 1954.
Tolls on the span, $1.75 for a standard automobile,
may have seemed hefty at the time. The convenience
of the two lane bridge, however, made the
price a bargain. Prior to the opening of the Skyway,
those traveling to points southward in Florida
from lower Pinellas either had to drive through
Tampa and around the other side of Tampa Bay
or take the Bee Line Ferry that used to operate
from the present location of Bay Vista Recreation
Center. Ferry service required a long wait as boats
transported vehicles across lower Tampa Bay. In
the early 1950s, the Bee Line carried approximately
338,000 cars annually on the forty-minute,
32 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

Clockwise, starting from the top, left:
One of the ships in the Bee Line Ferry
prepares to bring another group of
vehicles and passengers across the
lower portion of Tampa Bay.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
one-way trip. By 1970, the Skyway handled over
285,000 cars in a single month. The Skyway
became a recognizable image for the Tampa Bay
region, and the popularity of the bridge as a shortcut
across Tampa Bay encouraged transportation
department officials to construct a second, identical
cantilever span that opened in May 1971.
The Skyway became an important part of a
new roadway that cut through Pinellas County:
the Gulf Coast Highway, also known as U.S.
Highway 19. Originally, this road followed the
route of present-day Alt. 19 through the downtowns
of Largo, Clearwater, Dunedin, and
Tarpon Springs. As those cities grew, it became
impossible to widen these segments. Planners
instead decided to shift U.S. Highway 19 from
densely populated coastal areas of central and
northern Pinellas to the backbone of the largely
undeveloped center of the county. Although a trip
along U.S. Highway 19 today seems like a drive
along miles of urban sprawl, when designers
originally mapped this route in the early 1950s the
path cut through farmland, citrus groves, and areas
largely devoid of settlement. In northern Pinellas,
the construction of the Gulf Coast Highway
shifted development east from the
Gulf side of the county towards the
interior. In St. Petersburg, this new
roadway and the Skyway promoted
the development of communities in
western areas of the city as the main
north-south roadway shifted from
Fourth Street to Thirty-Fourth Street.
One gap in the roadway required
additional work. A large lake known
as Goose Pond once existed in the area
near U.S. Highway 19 and Central
Avenue. In order to construct the Gulf
Coast Highway, workers drained this
lake, similar to the removal of Lake
Largo in the mid-1910s. In the mid-
1950s, a “Miracle on Thirty-Fourth
Street” took place as the last link of
the roadway was finished at this site.
Soon thereafter, a large shopping center
known as Central Plaza opened.
Where once people had enjoyed an
A procession of vehicles crosses the
original span of the Sunshine Skyway
during dedication ceremonies in
September 1954. This bridge handled
traffic between Pinellas and Manatee
Counties that used to travel either
through Tampa or on the Bee Line
Ferry. A twin span opened in 1971.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Located on the former site of Goose
Pond, the Central Plaza Shopping
Center encouraged shoppers to leave
downtown stores with limited parking
for the thousands of asphalt spaces
available adjacent to these airconditioned
structures. This view from
the late 1950s shows a segment of
Central Plaza between U.S. Highway
19 and Thirty-First Street along
First Avenue South.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
By the early 1950s, the Skycrest
subdivision east of downtown
Clearwater began to take shape.
The relocation of U.S. Highway 19
from the downtown to areas east of
the city promoted developments such
as this along the backbone of
the peninsula.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
“Downtown” Palm Harbor, an
unincorporated area between Dunedin
and Tarpon Springs, retained its rural
character well into the 1970s. This
view shows a handful of businesses
near Alt. Highway 19 in the
mid-1950s.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Chapter 6 ✦ 33

Above: This business located along
Seminole Boulevard, and many
others like it throughout the county,
flourished during the 1950s at the
same time the lands that had provided
large citrus harvests to fill their
shelves began to give way to
development. By the 1970s, most
packing houses closed or became
other businesses.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Bottom, left: This aerial looks
westward along Corey Causeway as
the long, narrow bridge enters the
business district of St. Pete Beach in
the late 1940s.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Bottom, right: Corey Avenue served as
the heart of St. Pete Beach during the
postwar years. The Beach Theatre, an
air-conditioned venue that opened in
January 1940, appears on the left
(north) side of the road in front of the
large trees.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
afternoon of quiet fishing, an asphalt parking lot
large enough to accommodate 2,000 cars allowed
residents to park their vehicles and shop in airconditioned
convenience. Even before Central
Plaza opened, James Rosati had built Tyrone
Gardens, St. Petersburg’s first post-Depression
subdivision, and Tyrone Gardens Shopping
Center, the first postwar shopping center.
New stores challenged older downtown establishments,
such as Webb’s City in St. Petersburg.
James Earl “Doc” Webb came to St. Petersburg and
opened a small drugstore at Dr. Martin Luther
King (Ninth) Street and Second Avenue South in
the mid-1920s. His shopping complex, known as
the “World’s Most Unusual Drug Store,” expanded
to more than seventy stores on multiple city blocks
after World War II, and even included coin-operated
shows with dancing chickens. As suburban
shopping centers served new subdivisions in lower
Pinellas, Webb tried to keep up with his competition.
Ultimately, new shopping centers and malls
led to the demise of Webb’s City in 1979.
Much excitement came to Missouri Avenue in
Clearwater in September 1968 when traffic jams
and gold ribbons punctuated ceremonies at the
opening of Sunshine Mall. Called the “Suncoast’s
largest shopping mall” and the third largest in
Florida at the time, this enclosed, air-conditioned
shopping center contained seventy-one stores on
a site that previously had citrus groves. The mall
attracted more than 60,000 customers on its
opening day, a number larger than the population
of Clearwater at that time. Backups of eight to ten
miles were reported on Missouri Avenue. Other
malls soon mimicked this fully enclosed format,
such as the original Clearwater Mall, Countryside
Mall, Gateway Mall, Tyrone Square Mall, and an
expanded Seminole Mall, the site where the City
of Seminole began in November 1970.
Other new subdivisions and municipalities
appeared on the landscape. While many communities
seemed staid and traditional, one settlement
had a rambunctious, if brief, existence. Before the
incorporation of South Pasadena, the area where
this community is perched between Gulfport,
St. Petersburg, and St. Pete Beach briefly became
a wild and crazy town. On March 23, 1948, the
handful of residents in this area took advantage
of the simple nature of incorporating under older
Florida laws that were relics from the time the
state was a rural frontier. They established a
settlement known as Coreytown that included
four bars, a few fruit stands, and a curio shop.
Mayor Walter Caldwell Henry of Coreytown,
operator of one of the bars, said that incorporation
occurred so proprietors could keep half of the
beverage license fees and extend bar hours
beyond the midnight curfew mandated in unincorporated
areas. The bars in Coreytown operated
until 3:00 a.m. After a judge dissolved Coreytown
in 1951 because the community could not attract
twenty-five eligible voters for an election, the area
found a new life as South Pasadena. Incorporated
in July 1955, South Pasadena later became known
as the Pinellas County municipality with a median
age that has hovered around seventy for many
decades, quite a different place than Coreytown.
34 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

Sidney Colen came to St. Petersburg in 1947.
During the 1950s, he named subdivisions after
two of his children, Merna (Merna Park) and
Leslee (Leslee Heights). He wanted another
community named for his son, Kenneth. With
some prodding, legislators passed a bill in 1957
to create Kenneth City, a municipality on about
250 acres of unincorporated land in the Lealman
area between St. Petersburg and Pinellas Park.
Sidney Colen established a sanitary sewer and
private water utility system unaffiliated with
neighboring St. Petersburg. In June 1957, at a
gathering in the newest Pinellas municipality,
Colen gave a deed for the site of the city hall and
recreation center to residents. These facilities
opened in January 1958.
Beach communities also took shape and consolidated.
In May 1947 residents north of 140th
Avenue voted in favor of incorporating Madeira
Beach as a town. The area south towards Johns
Pass, once part of the Mitchell Beach development,
joined Madeira in August 1951. Across the
bridge, the settlements of Treasure Island, Boca
Ciega, Sunshine Beach, and Sunset Beach consolidated
into a single municipality of Treasure
Island in May 1955. That same month, an
eighteen-block stretch between Gulf Boulevard
and the Gulf of Mexico north of Indian Rocks
Beach became Gulf Belleair, a community later
renamed Belleair Shore. On August 30, 1955,
voters agreed to incorporate Redington Shores
as a municipality. Indian Rocks Beach voters
approved a referendum on incorporation in
November 1955. By the late 1950s, small communities
between Pass-a-Grille and Blind Pass
had merged into a single city known as
St. Petersburg Beach, renamed St. Pete Beach in
1994 to avoid confusion with St. Petersburg.
Postwar developments along the Gulf
Beaches required better infrastructure. In
September 1947 the Gulf Beaches Sanitary
District filed an injunction against the Haven
Beach Hotel at Indian Rocks Beach to prevent
the dumping of raw sewage into Boca Ciega
Bay. Other businesses along Gulf Boulevard
did the same thing, and many homes on the
beach operated with poorly designed septic
systems. During the late 1940s, beach communities
made great progress in their efforts to end
the dumping of waste into the bay and to curtail
the large bonfires where people used to burn
their trash. As beach communities developed
improved sanitation and water treatment
networks, they also devised a new marketing
strategy as they began to call themselves the
“Holiday Isles” by 1952.
Top, left: On Top of the World opened
as a condominium community east
of Clearwater in the late 1960s.
Developed by Sidney Colon, the man
who created Kenneth City ten years
earlier, this development led the way
as nearby Countryside took shape in
the 1970s and new condominiums
appeared along the Gulf Beaches.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Top, right: This postcard of the area
known as “The Narrows” captures
an image of the original bridge that
connected the Largo/Anona area to
Indian Rocks (front) in November
1916 as well as the replacement span
along Walsingham Road (rear) that
opened in June 1958. By the 1970s,
condominiums replaced the tall pines
and subdivisions sprouted on both
sides of the bay.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Bottom, left: Cars filled parking
spaces along Cleveland Street in
downtown Clearwater as shoppers
bought their presents for the
Holiday Season in the mid-1950s.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Bottom, right: This 1950s view of
the Clearwater Causeway follows the
narrow and nicely landscaped road
from the beach eastward into the
downtown. The Fort Harrison Hotel
appears at the center of the image.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Chapter 6 ✦ 35

Clockwise, starting from the top, left:
This view northward along the beach
at Pass-a-Grille recalls a time when
most buildings were lower than
the trees.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
This westward view along the
Treasure Island Causeway shows
landscape in the early 1950s that
experienced dramatic changes a
decade later.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
This view of Madeira Beach looking
eastward towards Bay Pines and
Seminole shows the main commercial
district in the late 1960s. Ten years
later, condominiums replaced all
of the buildings along the Gulf
(located at the bottom of the image).
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Even in the late 1940s, the fishing
community of Johns Pass seemed
relatively undeveloped. This view
looks from the Treasure Island side
towards the frontage that later
became part of Madeira Beach.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Dredging transformed the lower portion of
Boca Ciega Bay. In April 1957 county commissioners
approved Lee Ratner’s controversial
plans to dredge over 440 acres between St. Pete
Beach and St. Petersburg to create islands
along the future path of the Pinellas Bayway,
including present-day Bayway Isles and
Isla del Sol. Just to the south, workers
created large sand fills that transformed
Cabbage Key and Pine Key
into the Tierra Verde development.
Silas Dent, a friendly hermit who
once ran a dairy farm on Cabbage Key,
lived in a thatched hut, and made
grass skirts, had passed away in 1952,
a few years before developers transformed
his island paradise into a land
he would never recognize.
Similar modifications of Coquina Key,
Tropical Shores, Shore Acres, and Venetian
Isles along Tampa Bay in St. Petersburg also
distorted natural tidal flows. By the late 1960s,
environmentalists expressed concern at the
growing “dead zones” that had appeared in both
Boca Ciega Bay and Tampa Bay. Intermittent
bouts of red tide also harmed tourism, while
a devastating sponge blight during the late
1940s transformed the sponge docks at
Tarpon into more of a tourist destination than
a place to trade fresh harvests from the sea.
Another blight marked the region: the legacy
of racial segregation. Although Pinellas cities had
attracted a steady stream of Yankee and Midwestern
tourists since arrival of the railroad, Jim Crow
customs and laws remained in effect. Similar to
many other areas of the South, ordinances and
covenants on deeds mandated separate residential
communities, public accommodations, business
service points, and even cemeteries. African
Americans had assigned seating in ballparks,
restaurants, theaters, and other venues. They faced
immediate arrest if they did something as simple
as sit for a moment on the Sunshine City’s fabled
green benches. Even though Jackie Robinson
broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball
when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947,
during spring training games in St. Petersburg,
36 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

Clearwater, and other Florida locations, he and
other non-white players could not stay in hotels
leased by the team. Instead, they had to
sequester themselves in private homes of local
leaders in the African American community.
As St. Petersburg’s African American community
grew, the crowded areas at Methodist Town and
the Gas Plant district, now the site of Tropicana
Field, became too small to accommodate the population.
By the 1930s, city planners sought to
expand the Jim Crow district south and west of
the downtown, but carefully avoided the then
all-white communities of Bartlett Park, Lakeview,
and Childs Park. The construction of the Jordan
Park public housing community by the late 1930s
was a welcome relief, but even this settlement was
met by fierce opposition. Segregated enclaves for
African American residents in Clearwater and
Tarpon Springs, as well as the communities of
Ridgecrest, Baskin Crossing, and Dansville south
of Largo, rarely received their share of basic
services. While tourism officials promoted fun
and sun, African Americans who attempted to
swim along the Gulf Beaches faced immediate
arrest. When St. Petersburg lost a court case that
required Spa Beach and other facilities to integrate
in April 1957, the city responded by closing the
beaches to everyone.
Three years earlier, in May 1954, the U.S.
Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Brown vs.
Board of Education ruled that “separate but equal”
accommodations were unconstitutional. In 1955,
the Court issued its so-called implementation
decree, ordering states in affected areas to
desegregate facilities “with all deliberate speed.”
Superintendent Floyd T. Christian thought that
the courts would permit segregation to continue if
school officials in Pinellas made a good faith effort
to build improved facilities for black students.
Even before Brown, the county had started a
major plan to upgrade schools in segregated
communities in anticipation of court action. At
that time, the school board operated St. Petersburg
Junior College, the institution now known as
St. Petersburg College. Rather than integrate
the junior college, officials received approval to
create a segregated college at Gibbs High. Two
years after it opened, Gibbs became the sixth
largest junior college in the state, and the largest
for African Americans. Ironically, blacks in
neighboring counties, including Hillsborough
and Manatee, were actually bused into Gibbs
since those counties had no similar institution.
The legal attack on Pinellas County’s dual
system of schools began on May 7, 1964.
Leon Bradley, an African American resident of
Clearwater who also served in that city’s police
department, joined with four other Clearwater
residents and one from St. Petersburg in a class
action suit filed with the U.S. District Court in
Tampa. The plaintiffs challenged the school board’s
gradualist strategy. Various plans were proposed,
including the clustering of schools in certain geographic
areas. Although some progress occurred,
many schools remained largely or entirely segregated
until a 1971 federal court order mandated
countywide school desegregation. Buses once
used to perpetuate segregation became the vehicles
employed to break down racial barriers.
Top, left: Dredging reshaped the
contours of Boca Ciega Bay during the
mid-twentieth century. In this view
looking east towards Blind Pass, the
new subdivisions of Paradise Island
(left) and Yacht Club Estates (center)
appear in the estuary between
Treasure Island, St. Petersburg,
and St. Pete Beach.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Top, right: African Americans came
to the areas of Ridgecrest, Baskin
Crossing, and Dansville south of
Largo during the early twentieth
century to work in nearby groves.
During the 1940s, residents of this
segregated enclave sometimes referred
to the area as “Indian Rocks,” even
though they were not permitted to
live anywhere in the actual beach
community of Indian Rocks under the
laws of the time.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Left: During the postwar period, the
fabled green benches of St. Petersburg
once again thrived with hoards of
retirees. By the late 1950s, however,
crowds began to diminish and city
leaders charted a new course that led
to the removal of many benches by the
end of the 1960s.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Chapter 6 ✦ 37

Clockwise, starting from top, right:
This aerial looking eastward along the
Anclote River shows the sponge docks
of Tarpon Springs in the 1960s.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
The Kapok Tree Restaurant
opened adjacent to the kapok tree
on McMullen-Booth Road. Known
for its lavish architecture and richly
adorned dining rooms, this restaurant
provided a memorable dining
experience. A second Kapok Tree
Restaurant opened along Duhme
Road near Madeira Beach and
became popular during the 1970s.
Both have since closed.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Members of the pioneer McMullen,
Booth, and Hoyt families settled in
an area along Alligator Creek in
the 1800s. At the “Seven Oaks”
community near a path later known
as McMullen-Booth Road, the Hoyts
grew kapok trees during the late
1800s. Shortly after World War II,
tourists stopped along the narrow,
two-lane country road to admire one
of these kapoks in bloom.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Briefly the site of an amusement park
on a quiet stretch of U.S. 19 between
Pinellas Park and Ulmerton Road,
Joyland reopened as a popular venue
for country-western music in the
mid-1960s. The new owner kept the
“Joyland” name because the sign from
the former attraction cost $8,000.
Joyland remained a popular site into
the 1980s. It no longer exists.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Racism in St. Petersburg and other areas
of Pinellas was pervasive, and measures
such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provided
little relief when obscene discrepancies
remained. Some of the people doing the
hardest and most thankless work demanded
respect by the late 1960s. Although a strike
by St. Petersburg sanitation workers had
taken place in 1966, a larger strike began in
May 1968, a few weeks after Dr. Martin
Luther King’s assassination. Workers forced
to endure long workweeks and paltry raises
aired their legitimate grievances as trash baked
under the heat of the Sunshine City’s warmth.
An equally egregious situation occurred on
the “other side of the tracks” near Safety Harbor.
In the small African-American settlement of
Brooklyn, a youth group began digging trenches
for a pipeline in early 1970 so the thirty-five
families in the area would have access to fresh
water from a single community spigot. Residents
had to carry water to their homes from a community
water tap in buckets and containers. Safety
Harbor had installed the tap to provide a source of
fresh water after an outbreak of infant dysentery
had occurred in Brooklyn so this public health
crisis could be contained before it had a chance to
spread to the white community.
As the pipeline brought running water to the
Brooklyn settlement, residents also sought a
layer of shell to cover their dirt streets. Their initial
request for the county to provide approximately
$850 in shell to improve some streets was
denied in April 1970. Finally, a September compromise
allowed county workers to spread the
shell on these roads after Brooklyn’s financially
challenged families raised $1,100 by auctioning
household goods and their few possessions to
pay for this simple improvement. Residents
installed mailboxes in June 1971 and, for the
first time, regular postal delivery service began.
The postwar land boom generated unprecedented
wealth and development in Pinellas.
Tourists filled beach hotels, enjoyed a variety of
local attractions, and sustained a vibrant economy.
Retirees flocked to new communities and
families witnessed an incredible expansion of
educational facilities and recreational opportunities.
Yet, for all of the excitement of this
period, the environmental calamities caused by
land reclamation projects and dredging and the
inequalities found in the Brooklyn settlement
and elsewhere proved that “Progressive Pinellas”
faced some challenges. Leaders faced many
critical choices as the twentieth century came to
an end. The decisions made since the 1970s
continue to shape our county today.
38 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

CHAPTER 7
SUBDIVISIONS, RETIREMENT COMMUNITIES, AND “CONDOMANIA” (1972-2000)
Although each of us grows older as time marches forward, Pinellas County became a youthful and more
vibrant destination by the 1970s. Retirement communities remained, but retirees enjoyed a more active
lifestyle. Earlier images and stereotypes differed from reality. No longer did St. Petersburg resemble the
“God’s Waiting Room” that the longtime Tonight Show host Johnny Carson joked about and that Ron
Howard dramatically portrayed in the 1985 feature film Cocoon. Pinellas Park and Palm Harbor no longer
seemed out in the country, and Countryside’s landscape had more homes than horses. Although orange
and grapefruit trees remained in many backyards, most workers from the citrus and agricultural industries
found new jobs in the service sector or they retired and enjoyed time by their condominium swimming
pool or at one of the many parks found throughout Pinellas. Although some schools faced challenges
during the period of school busing for racial integration, the transition to desegregated facilities in
Pinellas occurred without the level of violence or tension found in many northern cities, such as Boston.
People sought “newer” solutions to the “older” problem in places such as St. Petersburg. During the
1920s land boom, Florida welcomed seasonal retirees. In the 1940s and 1950s, the city even sponsored
a filmmaker to create promotional films about St. Petersburg. The 1960 decennial census changed the
focus of the conversation. In 1960, half of the population of downtown St. Petersburg, as defined by
census tracts, was over the age of sixty-six. During the early years of the 1960s, city leaders tried to
reinvent the city, wanting to toss aside the image of retirees on green benches and replace those scenes
with a lively, invigorated community. This trend accelerated by the 1970s. Soon, the green benches
disappeared. Some benches of other colors arrived, but fewer people congregated on them. In part, the
decline of the crowds of retirees was the result of a concerted effort to transform the downtown, whether
it was removing green benches or replacing the “Million Dollar” Pier with the “inverted pyramid” Pier.
However, other factors were involved, such as new retirement communities in other areas, the growing
influence of television and other forms of media, and the conversion
of many patios into fully air-conditioned “Florida rooms.” Lifestyles
changed, and sitting on benches all day long no longer seemed hip.
Two notable developments came to the area east of Clearwater.
Sidney Colon, the man who had named a city for his son Kenneth
in the 1950s, brought his vision to vacant lands north of Sunset
Point Road. During the late 1960s, his “On Top of the World” condominium
development became a popular planned community
surrounded by groves that soon gave way to shopping centers.
In May 1972 the U.S. Home Corporation announced plans for its
Countryside development east of Clearwater. Within a short time,
Clearwater annexed the Countryside area.
Above: The former railroad depot in
downtown Tarpon Springs serves as a
local history museum. The Pinellas
Trail, a continuous recreation path
between Tarpon Springs and
St. Petersburg, follows the crosswalk
shown on this image.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAMES A. SCHNUR.
Below: Largo High School’s popular
Band of Gold won national and
international acclaim. In this image
from the early 1970s, the band
performed along West Bay Drive in
central Largo.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Chapter 7 ✦ 39

Right: The Aquatarium, once located
west of Gulf Boulevard in St. Pete
Beach, attracted crowds for its
popular dolphin shows during the
1960s and early 1970s. As larger
theme parks elsewhere redefined
patterns of tourism, the Aquatarium
closed and was later replaced
by condominiums.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Middle: This postcard shows
Tiki Gardens as it appeared in the
mid-1960s, when it was also known
as the Signal House. The Polynesianthemed
restaurant, gift shop, and
gardens along Indian Shores remained
a popular destination into the 1980s.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Below: The large boot at Boot Ranch
once dominated the skyline by
standing above the groves. Orange
trees and cattle herds disappeared
long ago. Presently situated at a
shopping center near Tampa Road,
this symbol of Pinellas County’s past
now witnesses a different type of cattle
call: That of endless commuters along
the crowded roads.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAMES A. SCHNUR.
The success of Colon’s development encouraged
others to acquire large tracts along the Gulf
Beaches. Sand Key, once a deserted area with a
few tall pine trees, became a narrow strip of
beach with condominiums that rose above the
tallest structures across the harbor in downtown
Clearwater. Many mom-and-pop establishments
between Clearwater Beach and St. Pete Beach
disappeared as “condomania” transformed Gulf
Boulevard, the Pinellas Bayway, and much of
Tierra Verde. By the 1980s, as movie production
crews filmed Summer Rental along Madeira and
the Redington Beaches, timeshares also dotted
the coastal landscape. Although a stretch of
Gulf Boulevard in Treasure Island maintained a
few of the 1950s and 1960s-era hotels, many of
the older motor courts, restaurants, and tourist
attractions—such as the Aquatarium on St. Pete
Beach—gave way to gated condominium
communities. While municipal support saved
St. Petersburg’s Sunken Gardens from oblivion,
other small tourist attractions—such as Tiki
Gardens in Indian Shores—could not compete
with Walt Disney World and other large theme
parks. Soon Trader Frank’s at Tiki Gardens
became a beach access parking lot as an endless
parade of condos obstructed views of the beach.
Frenzied development also transformed areas
south and east of Lake Tarpon. In 1952, Al Boyd
and his family established Boot Ranch in the
area near where Tampa Road meets Curlew. They
raised Brahman bulls and cows. Much of East
Lake and Palm Harbor remained rural in character
well into the late 1960s. As pasturelands started
to disappear in 1970, locals worried that plans
to develop a small, one-runway airport on a fiftyacre
tract near Keystone Road would disrupt their
cattle and dairy production. They gathered at Boot
Ranch and established the Rural Protective
Association as a non-profit organization to oppose
the airport and prevent suburban encroachment.
Residents of the sparsely developed area fought a
last ditch—and ultimately unsuccessful—battle to
preserve their rural lifestyle in the frontier range
of northeastern Pinellas County. Despite their
lobbying efforts, members of the Rural Protective
Association could not halt the wave of development
that spilled along the eastern shores of
Lake Tarpon after the opening of this small
airport, known as Tarpon Air Park. This landing
strip closed long ago, and the open range that
came before it is now extinct.
Al Boyd sold Boot Ranch “on a handshake” to
a land development company in 1972. The Boyd
family’s landholdings shrunk to under 500
acres by the late 1980s. Developers
transformed tracts formerly owned by
Boyd into the East Lake Woodlands,
Lansbrook, and Boot Ranch subdivisions.
Citrus groves in Largo, Seminole,
Palm Harbor, and eastern Clearwater
also gave way to new residential
communities and commercial establishments.
Along the Gulf Coast
Highway that seemed so empty in the
mid-1950s, a growing cavalcade of cars
clogged the roadway. Some were filled
with retirees in search of an early bird
dinner at a restaurant, while others transported
workers along miles of urban sprawl. More
than a few vehicles adorned a popular bumper
sticker that said, “Pray for me. I drive on U.S. 19.”
While the completion of Interstate 275 in
St. Petersburg, the Bayside Bridge, and endless
road widening projects helped a little, most
drivers during the last forty years have become
accustomed to orange cones, construction zones,
and the ubiquitous barricades that greet their
morning and afternoon commutes.
40 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

One construction project during the mid-
1980s occurred after a terrible tragedy. A
ferocious rainstorm on May 9, 1980, made the
morning commute almost untenable. Shortly
after 7:30 a.m., a 606-foot freighter named the
Summit Venture, under the control of a local harbor
pilot, missed the turn in the channel and
struck one of the large support beams of the 1971
span of the Sunshine Skyway. Approximately
1,000 feet of the central span collapsed and
plummeted into Tampa Bay, taking along with it
numerous vehicles and a Greyhound bus. Thirtyfive
people perished. On at least three other occasions
since January, boats had hit the nine-year
old span. Just a short distance away, on January
28, another freighter, the Capricorn, had collided
with the Coast Guard cutter Blackthorn, leading
to the deaths of twenty-three members of the
Coast Guard. The original 1954 span became a
two-way bridge while work crews designed a
replacement span, the current cable-stayed
bridge that opened to traffic in April 1987.
The new Skyway became a visible symbol for
the region at a time when leaders had to abandon
parochial interests and think of solutions that
crossed political boundaries. Although various
Pinellas municipalities have attempted to annex
unincorporated areas such as lands east of Lake
Seminole and much of Lealman, battles over these
areas have become part of a larger struggle: A builtout,
heavily urbanized county must find new ways
to sustain and enrich the experiences of residents
and visitors but cannot follow the slash-and-build
practices that kept the economic engine in overdrive
when land was plentiful and people few.
Management of natural resources, such as water,
serves as an excellent example of a challenge that
requires solutions that cut across county lines.
During periods of drought, water tables in lakes in
Pasco, Hernando, and Hillsborough counties drop
as Pinellas pumps out potable water. Salt water
intrusion has compromised most of the aquifer
below Pinellas. With little land to build upon,
Pinellas civic, business, and political leaders had to
think of collaborative partnerships to preserve
their slices of paradise by the early 1970s.
The pursuit of sports teams encouraged both
teamwork and competition at the regional level.
The region’s first professional sports franchise,
the Tampa Bay Rowdies, spent time on both sides
of the bay, playing outdoor games in Tampa
Stadium and indoor games at the Bayfront Center
in downtown St. Petersburg. Pinellas residents
gladly crossed bridges to see the Tampa Bay
Buccaneers after the National Football League
team took the field in 1976, even during the early
years when losses far outnumbered wins.
Since the 1970s, the Tampa Bay region had
pursued a major league baseball franchise. After a
failed attempt to bring the Minnesota Twins to
Tampa, Pinellas County leaders approved an ambitious
plan to construct a multipurpose stadium in
an area east of downtown St. Petersburg before
any promise of a team appeared on the horizon.
As the region courted the Chicago White Sox,
Texas Rangers, San Francisco Giants, and Seattle
Mariners, the former Gas Plant site became a massive
construction project for the Florida Suncoast
Dome. Opened for concerts and trade shows in
Below: Even in its damaged form,
the Sunshine Skyway remained a
visible symbol of the Tampa Bay
region. This postcard from the early
1980s includes ‘before’ and ‘after’
photographs of the twin spans that
illustrate how much of the 1971 span
fell into Tampa Bay when the
Summit Venture hit the bridge in
May 1980.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Bottom, left: This view of Webb’s City
shows the ‘back side’ of the main store
as it appeared in the early 1960s from
the intersection of Second Avenue
and Eighth Street South. By the
mid-1970s, a decline in the downtown
retiree population and the advent of
new suburban shopping centers
siphoned business away from “The
World’s Most Unusual Drug Store.”
In recent years, the site of the former
main building has become an overflow
parking lot for city vehicles and
Tropicana Field.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Bottom right: The Tampa Bay region
began its pursuit of a major league
baseball franchise in the 1970s.
In a bold move, Pinellas County
commissioners and leaders in
St. Petersburg approved a plan to
construct a domed stadium without a
guarantee of receiving a franchise.
Work on the Florida Suncoast Dome
began in the mid-1980s after residents
of many historically African American
communities in the former Gas Plant
district were relocated. This image
shows the stadium in 1990, before
additional renovations took place.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Chapter 7 ✦ 41

Above: Softball games in the senior
club known as the Kids & Kubs have
been popular since their inception in
1931. Players must reach seventy-five
years of age to compete in these
contests along St. Petersburg’s
waterfront. The group shown played
in the late 1980s.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
Below: The Showboat Dinner Theatre
along Ulmerton Road became a
popular venue to enjoy a dinner show.
Located near the St. Petersburg-
Clearwater International Airport,
the Showboat took its last curtain call
in the 1990s before its walls came
tumbling down.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AND
LIBRARY, HERITAGE VILLAGE.
1990, the stadium became an early home for
the Tampa Bay Storm, an Arena Football League
franchise. During the mid-1990s, the stadium—
renamed the Thunderdome—also served as a
temporary home for the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Finally, after many years at the altar, the
summertime union of baseball and the region
was consummated when the Tampa Bay Devil
Rays came into existence in March 1995. After
substantial enhancements, Tropicana Field hosted
its first opening day on March 31, 1998, when
the Devil Rays played the Detroit Tigers. An exciting
2008 season with a World Series appearance
brought crowds and excitement to the Trop for
the rechristened Tampa Bay Rays after years of
bedevilment. Even as other suitors have started
to test the marriage of the Rays to St. Petersburg
and its domed stadium, the franchise remains a
valuable community asset for the entire region.
Postsecondary and cultural heritage institutions
also enriched the Pinellas landscape. St. Petersburg
College had humble beginnings in 1927 in
borrowed space at a high school. Campuses
now span the entire peninsula and partnerships
abound. Since its opening in 1960, Eckerd
College—originally named Florida Presbyterian
College—has sustained a tradition of liberal arts
education. The University of South Florida
launched a branch campus along Bayboro Harbor
in July 1965. The Bayboro Campus has since
evolved into the separately accredited University
of South Florida St. Petersburg. Clearwater
Christian College occupies a site near the original
Bay View settlement in eastern Clearwater.
Historical museums, art galleries, performing
arts centers, and parks enjoy broad support. The
former Pinellas County Historical Museum, once
housed in the basement of the county courthouse,
took on a new and vibrant life with the opening
of Heritage Village in the summer of 1977. Over
thirty historical buildings and features moved
to Heritage Village tell the story of agriculture,
coastal living, tourism, and community life along
the peninsula. Passenger rail service may have
ended in Pinellas in February 1984, but long
segments of the former railroad tracks now serve
as the Pinellas Trail, a continuous recreational path
that links Tarpon Springs with St. Petersburg.
Beaches at Fort DeSoto, Honeymoon Island,
Caladesi Island, and other Pinellas locations
regularly win international acclaim.
By 2000, over 920,000 people called Pinellas
County their home. Seasonal residents and
tourists brought the population to more than
one-million. New immigrant communities
began to arrive by the
1970s that reshaped the cultural
mosaic. Commercial establishments
catered to new immigrant communities
from Central America, Mexico,
and Southeast Asia. Vietnamese
and Thai restaurants robustly
competed with older Chinese and
Japanese establishments. While
St. Petersburg’s International Folk
Fair remained a wonderful place
to learn about other cultures, old
patterns of racial and residential
segregation also began to erode as
new neighbors moved on the block.
42 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

EPILOGUE
A NEW MILLENNIUM, A NEW CENTURY (2001-2012)
A vibrant real estate boom ushered in the new millennium. Real estate prices soared at an unprecedented
and unsustainable rate. From Redington Beach to Belleair and beyond, speculation abounded.
Year-round residents received junk mail urging them to sell, while escalating homeowners insurance rates
made it more difficult to stay. Although Pinellas County missed most of the damage from the harsh 2004
hurricane season, unfavorable legislation and poor business decisions cast clouds upon the peninsula.
The economic downturns and mortgage crises that left many Americans upside-down on their
debts hit Pinellas County especially hard. Property values plummeted, while governmental entities
and businesses retrenched. Coastal dreamlands became beachscapes where foreclosure filings began
to surpass building permits issued. For the first time since the mid-1800s, the population declined as
Pinellas became one of two Florida counties that lost people in the 2010 decennial census.
Above: For more than a century,
residents of St. Petersburg have
enjoyed the expansive public park
system that spans from Demens’s
Landing to Snell Isle.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAMES A. SCHNUR.
Bottom, left: A view towards
downtown St. Petersburg from
Weedon Island Preserve connects the
past with the present.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAMES A. SCHNUR.
Bottom, right: Located along the
southeastern shore of Lake Tarpon,
John Chestnut, Sr., Park provides
visitors with miles of trails.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAMES A. SCHNUR.
Epilogue ✦ 43

Clockwise, starting from the top:
Each evening, crowds assemble in
unincorporated Crystal Beach to
watch the sun disappear on the
western horizon. Similar to Key West,
sunsets are a community affair here.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAMES A. SCHNUR.
The current St. Petersburg Pier will
disappear from the waterfront in a
few years. Many people have offered
their suggestions regarding what
should replace the inverted pyramid.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAMES A. SCHNUR.
A large and enthusiastic crowd filled
Tropicana Field for the American
League Division Series against the
Texas Rangers in October 2011.
The Tampa Bay Rays had won a wild
card spot thanks to a miraculous
season-ending victory over the
New York Yankees in game 162 on
September 28, 2011. Since reaching
the World Series in 2008, the Rays
have brought excitement to those
attending games at the Trop.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAMES A. SCHNUR.
Despite economic and environmental challenges,
the Pinellas peninsula continues to thrive
and remain a place of beauty. The beaches attract
crowds. The water quality of Boca Ciega Bay
and Tampa Bay has dramatically improved since
the 1970s. In searching for a brighter future, we
can learn from the lessons of the past. Vibrant
indigenous cultures flourished here for millennia.
Spaniards, Cubans, and Florida Crackers enjoyed
the bountiful harvests of our estuaries. Tourists
braved mosquitoes to enjoy our dolphin shows
and hotels long before air conditioners made
summer evenings tolerable. Newlyweds, young
families, and retirees abandoned their longestablished
roots in places like Cincinnati and
Detroit to find that perfect ranch home for their
collection of plastic pink flamingos. Pinellas
County has a rich and wonderful history. As
we begin our second century of independence,
we have many new chapters to write.
44 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

SHARING THE HERITAGE
Historic profiles of businesses, organizations,
and families that have contributed to the
development and economic base of Pinellas County
Tampa Bay Water ..........................................................................46
APG Electric
Electrical Contractors and Engineers ..........................................50
The Salvation Army.......................................................................52
Candlewood Suites.........................................................................54
Prestige Spa Covers .......................................................................56
St. Petersburg College....................................................................58
TSE Industries, Inc........................................................................60
City of Clearwater ........................................................................62
Bayfront Medical Center ................................................................63
Located a short drive north of the
Bayside Bridge, Safety Harbor retains
a small town charm with an attractive
business district centered along its
Main Street. The spa, site of the
original Espiritu Santo Springs, is
located at the far end of this image
along Old Tampa Bay.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAMES A. SCHNUR.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 45

TAMPA BAY
WATER
Above: Alafia River Intake. Water
from the Alafia River is sent to the
Tampa Bay Regional Surface Water
Treatment Plant for treatment or the
Regional Reservoir for storage.
Below: C. W. Bill Young Regional
Reservoir. During dry periods, water
from the reservoir is sent to the
Tampa Bay Regional Surface Water
Treatment Plant. The reservoir is two
miles long, one mile wide and the
circumference at the top of the berm is
five miles.
Water is essential to life, and each day
Tampa Bay Water delivers water to more than
2.4 million people in the Tampa Bay area. This
water is delivered responsibly and safely by an
authority dedicated to the long term.
Tampa Bay Water is a regional water supply
authority that provides wholesale water to three
cities and three counties—New Port Richey,
St. Petersburg, Tampa, Hillsborough County,
Pasco County and Pinellas County.
Tampa Bay Water is a true regional utility,
funded through the sale of water to member
governments. The members share the cost of
developing new supplies, share in environmental
stewardship, share voting rights equitably
among the three counties, and pay the same
wholesale water rates.
The authority’s responsibilities include planning,
developing, producing and delivering a
high-quality drinking water supply, and meeting
the need for about 186 million gallons per day
by the six governments it serves. In addition,
the authority advocates for the protection of the
public’s water resources.
Tampa Bay Water is a nonprofit, special district
of the state created by interlocal agreement
among the member governments. Policies are
established by a nine-member board of directors,
with two elected commissioners from each
member county and one elected representative
from each member city.
Tampa Bay Water was created in 1998 after
a two-year process that resulted in contracts
and legislation that changed the name,
structure and operations of the
West Coast Regional Water Supply
Authority. The creation of Tampa
Bay Water ended the region’s ‘water
wars’ and created a new alliance
between the six governments in
west-central Florida.
The local governments work
together to develop and supply
drinking water to the region in an
environmentally sound manner. The
costs of new supply development
and environmental stewardship are
shared regionally.
Tampa Bay Water’s 128-person
staff includes scientists, engineers,
hydrologists, water plant operators,
bookkeepers and others responsible
for the daily water delivery and planning
to meet future water needs.
46 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

The authorities’ policy is directed by a ninemember
board of directors from the member
governments. The board includes two elected
representatives from each member county and
one elected representative for each member city
to ensure balanced voting power.
Current members of the board of directors
include Pasco County Commissioner Ann
Hildebrand, who serves as chairperson;
Commissioner Susan Latvala of Pinellas County,
who serves as vice chairperson; Commissioner
Sandra Murman of Hillsborough County;
Mayor Bob Consalvo of New Port Richey;
Commissioner Ted Schrader of Pasco County;
Commissioner Mark Sharpe of Hillsborough
County; Commissioner Neil Brickfield of
Pinellas County; Councilman Karl Nurse of
St. Petersburg; and Councilman Charlie Miranda
of Tampa.
Tampa Bay Water’s performance is reviewed
every five years by an outside consulting firm.
This is one of the ways the Tampa Bay Water’s
Board of Director’s ensure the regional water
utility is efficient, effective and economical.
Unlike a financial audit, the performance
audit looks at the activities of the agency and
reviews the performance in comparison with
organizations of similar size and type.
Each performance audit is conducted in accordance
with Generally Accepted Government
Auditing Standards issued by the Comptroller
General of the United States.
Tampa Bay Water’s system is unlike any
other water supply in the nation because it
blends river water, desalinated seawater and
groundwater. The first regional alternative
water supply began serving Tampa Bay Water’s
members in 2002. Prior to that, the cities
and counties served by Tampa Bay Water
and its predecessor agency, the West Coast
Regional Water Supply Authority, relied solely
on groundwater to meet their drinking
water needs.
The West Coast Regional Water Supply
Authority existed from 1974 to 1998. Members
included Hillsborough County, Pasco County,
Pinellas County, St. Petersburg and Tampa. New
Port Richey was a non-voting member.
Above: Groundwater levels are back
to expected levels and wetlands are
recovering throughout the region as a
result of the addition of alternative
drinking water supplies.
Below: Governor Lawton Chiles and
local legislative delegates signed the
Amended and Restated Interlocal
Agreement on June 10, 1998, creating
Tampa Bay Water.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 47

Master Water Plan Groundbreaking:
September 15, 2001. Regional officials
participate in the kick-off to a nearly
$1 billion infrastructure project to
create a reliable, interconnected
drinking water system.
Some member governments owned their
own water supply facilities and contracted with
the authority for a share of water from a specific
facility. Others owned none or few facilities,
contracting with the authority for shares of
water from several facilities. Some were precluded
from developing their own supplies.
In the 1990s eleven regional groundwater
facilities served nearly ninety percent of the
members’ demand for groundwater. In 1998 the
face value of the permits for these facilities
totaled 192 million gallons per day.
But due to on-going drought, development,
pumping and alterations to the natural drainage
systems, the environment suffered.
In late 1992 the West Coast Regional Water
Supply Authority began investigating new
water supply options and developed a Resource
Development Plan (RDP). The RDP was based
on a comprehensive analysis of current and
future demand, demand management and conservation,
supply sources and facility capacities
and provided specific recommendations for
developing new water supplies as an integrated
water resource plan.
The RDP yielded a number of potential water
supply options that were evaluated and ranked,
utilizing ten criteria. The supply elements were
combined to create alternative plans to meet
the identified facilities need. The alternative
plans had to meet five objectives established
by West Coast’s board of directors: Aggressive
conservation and reserve/rotational capacity;
diversified supply sources; limited additional
groundwater beyond built and exchanged
capacity; increased drought-proof and droughtresistant
components; and least cost consistent
with previous objectives.
After investigating a number of options, Tampa
Bay Water’s board of directors approved construction
of the Master Water Plan Configuration I
in November 1998. The plan included a number
of diverse, alternative water supply sources
and key pipelines and interconnections.
The first alternative water supply to serve
the region was surface water withdrawn from
the Tampa Bypass Canal and treated at the
Tampa Bay Regional Surface Water Treatment
Plant. Configuration I created an expanded,
interconnected regional water supply while
also keeping pace with the region’s growing
water demands. The projects of Configuration I
were expected to meet the region’s water needs
through 2012.
An important part of the Tampa Bay Region’s
drinking water supply is the Seawater
48 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

Desalination facility. This drought-proof, alternative
water supply provides up to 25 million
gallons per day of drinking water to the region.
Seawater coming into the plant goes through
a rigorous pretreatment process and then
freshwater is separated from the seawater using
reverse osmosis. The end product is highquality
drinking water that supplies up to ten
percent of the region’s needs.
The Tampa Bay Seawater Desalination Plant
is currently the largest operating seawater
desalination plant in North America. The
1.4 billion gallons of warm water that typically
flow through the Big Bend power plant’s
cooling system each day could provide every
New York City resident with three hot showers.
As you would expect, Tampa Bay Water is
deeply committed to conservation of the
region’s vital water supply. The authority
researches, plans and coordinates water saving
efforts for the Tampa Bay Region. Watering
restrictions are in effect year-round in the
region and residents may make sure they are
watering correctly by accessing the authority’s
website and simply typing in their zip code.
At Tampa Bay Water, we understand that water
is essential to life. Our vision is delivering safe,
clean water to sustain the region’s quality of life and
environment. It is our mission to serve the public
by supplying and protecting your drinking water.
For more information about Tampa Bay Water,
check the website at www.tampabaywater.org.
Clockwise, starting from the top:
The Tampa Bay Regional Surface
Water Treatment Plant: this first
alternative supply came online in
2002 and can treat up to a maximum
of 120 million gallons of water a day,
making it the workhorse of the
regional drinking water system.
The Tampa Bay Seawater
Desalination Plant: The largest
operating seawater desalination in the
United States as of 2011; the plant
can provide up to ten percent of the
region’s drinking water needs and is
drought-proof.
Cypress Creek Pump Station. Tampa
Bay Water’s entire 2,000 square mile
system is monitored from the Cypress
Creek Operations Center and
Pump Station.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 49

APG ELECTRIC
ELECTRICAL
CONTRACTORS
AND ENGINEERS
Right: Jerry Lightner (left) and
John Kavula in the early years of
APG Electric.
Below: John and Jerry with company
mascot “Ed.” Named after founding
partner Edmund Goulder, this 1984
Chevy pick-up truck was completely
restored and then adorned with the
original APG logo in celebration of
twenty-five years.
APG Electric has provided top-quality electrical
installations in the Tampa Bay area since
1984. But the firm’s roots can actually be traced
back nearly a century to the Doan Electric
Company of Cleveland, Ohio, which was established
by A. P. Goulder in 1915. Goulder began
his business wiring homes, converting them
from gas lighting to electric lighting.
When John Kavula and Jerry Lightner decided
to form an electrical contracting firm in the
Tampa Bay area, they turned to Goulder’s son,
Edmund, for financial backing. Kavula had
worked for Doan Electric before moving to
Florida in 1979.
“When I left Doan Electric, Edmund told me
to call him if I ever wanted to start a business on
my own,” Kavula explains. “Jerry Lightner and I
were working together at a local firm when we
decided to form a partnership. Recalling that
conversation with Edmund, I called him to
present our idea for a new electrical contracting
firm in Florida.”
The new company was named APG Electric,
in honor of A. P. Goulder.
John, his wife Pat, and Jerry were the only
employees when APG Electric opened for business
in January 1984. By the end of the first
year, their staff had grown to over twenty-five
and sales exceeded $1.1 million. The young
firm soon became one of the largest and most
respected electrical contractors in the Tampa
Bay area and established a reputation for exceptional
service and quality.
In 1994, a decision was made to expand the
business beyond basic electrical construction
and service, starting with the addition of electrical
engineering and design services and continuing
with installation and service of electrical
systems, including fire alarm, voice/data/video,
security, and building automation. Later, BIM
services were also added. With these capabilities
in place, APG could truly market themselves as
a “full-service” electrical contractor, with a
diverse team of professionals to handle every
aspect of a project.
APG hit a major milestone in the late 1990s
with construction of Universal Studios Islands
of Adventure—The Lost Continent. This was one
of the largest electrical contracts in the company’s
history and led to expansion into the
Central Florida area with a satellite office in
Orlando. Another milestone was reached in
2006, when company sales surpassed the
$30 million mark, and in 2009, an additional
satellite office was opened in Lakeland.
Both Kavula and Lightner credit the
company’s success to the belief in oldfashioned
values that A. P. Goulder brought
to his business.
“We’ve tried to build APG Electric around
several core values,” explains Kavula. “These
include the positive way we treat our
employees, the way we partner with our
vendors, and a focus on the needs of our
customers. Our mission is ‘Do It Right’ by
demonstrating honesty and integrity in all
matters; by being cooperative and flexible
in dealings with customers, employees and
50 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

suppliers; by accepting only quality workmanship
from ourselves and our associates; by making
customer service our number one priority;
by doing whatever it takes to complete all work
on schedule and to full customer satisfaction;
and by building a company based on team
spirit and high morale, being proud of what we
do and how we do it.”
Since its start with three employees back in
1984, APG Electric now employs around 240
people, including many long-time employees,
and remains an industry leader in Pinellas
County and beyond. The firm has completed
thousands of local projects, both large and small,
and continues to specialize in healthcare, institutional,
industrial and commercial installations.
They are proud to have worked on projects that
have served to enhance the community, such as
the Morgan Heart Hospital at Morton Plant, a
surgery expansion and new cardiac institute at
Bayfront Medical Center, Eckerd College expansion,
Transitions Optical, complete renovation
of Ruth Eckerd Hall, Raymond James Financial
Towers, East Lake High School, Boca Ciega
High School, and Crescent Beach and Ultimar
Condominiums on Sand Key Beach.
From conceptual design, through construction
to annual maintenance, APG Electric does it all.
Left: Doan principals from the
Goulder and Heiser families founded
APG Electric in 1984 with John R.
Kavula and Jerold B. Lightner. John
and Jerry now serve as chief executive
officer and chief operating officer
respectively, sharing management
responsibilities with Michael D.
Henley, president and Christopher M.
Johnson, vice president. Celebrating
twenty-five years, left to right:
Chris Johnson, Jerry Lightner,
Robby Heiser, Lenny Heiser,
John Kavula and Mike Henley.
Below: In 2009, APG held a banquet
to celebrate their twenty-fifth
anniversary. During the program all
employees who had been with the
company for twenty years or more
were invited to the stage for
special recognition.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 51

THE
SALVATION ARMY
There is no reward equal to
that of doing the most good to
the most people in the most
need—Evangeline Booth, 1919.
The Salvation Army was
founded in 1865 by William
Booth, a young Methodist
minister in London, England,
who had a passion for the
ignored and forgotten. Booth
began his ministry by preaching
on the street corners, but
when the ‘mainline ‘churches
declined to welcome the poor
and downtrodden, he felt
compelled to organize his own
church, which was known as
The Salvation Army.
The Salvation Army movement
spread to the United
States in the late 1800s and
ministry and services began in Pinellas County
one hundred years ago.
On October 23, 1912, Salvationists from
Tampa held their first services in a tent on Central
Avenue, next to the Detroit Hotel. The meetings
were led by newly assigned St. Petersburg officers,
Ensign and Mrs. John Heather.
obtained the Army’s first building, a tiny wooden
cottage with a high, slanted roof, located
at 318 Third Street South. Sometimes referred
to as ‘The Glory Shop’, the building was used
for worship, emergency relief and the officers’
living quarters.
The tent meeting was followed by street
meetings on Central Avenue and distribution of
articles to the needy during the Christmas
holiday. Within a few months, The Salvation
Army’s work had become so successful
that plans were made to secure a building
as a permanent meeting site. Ensign Heather
The Army’s work expanded rapidly and
additional staff—Supply Sara Guess and her
assistant, Supply Luella Knox—was dispatched
to St. Petersburg in 1916.
In June 1923, Heather, now promoted to
Captain, was succeeded by nineteen year old
Envoy Margaret Batts and five other young
women. The officers worked long hours
preaching, guiding and feeding the poor.
Despite the often uncomfortable Florida heat,
the women continued to wear their somber,
long-skirted, navy wool uniforms with widebrimmed
bonnets.
52 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

Many families still active in the St. Petersburg
Corps today are descendants of those early
soldiers. Lois Mardis Baker was nine years
old when the Glory Shop opened and she
became the drummer. Albert Baker remembers
that when the Army was still holding open
air meetings, he and his siblings “sat on the
corner while Mother beat the drum.” The
family of Ambrose and Georgia Bozeman Jones
began attending the Kew Gardens outpost,
and later the new Citadel, playing in the band.
Three family members became SA officers and
Dorothy Jones served twenty-seven years as a
missionary to India.
was dedicated in January 1971 by General
Arnold Brown and Brigadier and Mrs. Harold
Robins, Corps Officers. Pinellas Park Corps was
dedicated the following day, replacing what had
been the Clearview Corps.
In recent years, the Army has expanded with
the acquisition of the current social services
building at 1400 Fourth Street South, which
provides 112 beds for the homeless and
feeds 300 people each day. In addition the
Salvation Army Sallie House for abused or
neglected children was opened, along with
the Children’s Campus for foster children,
including Children’s Village.
In the near future, The Salvation Army plans
to almost double the capacity of its 112 bed
shelter in St. Petersburg to include multiple
family apartments. This will enable families to
remain intact while receiving the Army’s services.
Tom Smith, a carpenter, repaired and
enhanced the Army’s little building and, during
the Great Depression, Rutland’s Store donated
fabric, which was used to make clothing for
needy children in the area.
St. Petersburg’s population soared as people
attracted by the warm climate came looking
for jobs, but many remained unemployed. The
young Salvation Army officers worked hard to
meet the needs of the expanding population
and soon outgrew ‘the ol’ Glory Shop’. This
inspired Envoy Batts to open an ‘outpost’ at
Kew Gardens located at Thirty-fifth Street and
Ninth Avenue.
Impressed by the work of these dedicated
Christians, a group of community-minded
men organized a drive for funds to build a
larger home for the Salvation Army. The
‘Glory Shop’ was razed and a new four-story
building erected on the same site. The building,
designed for worship, welfare and transient
relief, was dedicated to the glory of God and
service to mankind in September 1926.
The present St. Petersburg Citadel Corps and
Community Center at 3800 Ninth Avenue North
Locally, the Salvation Army is led by five clergy,
more than 100 employees and countless volunteers.
Globally, there are more than 26,000
SA clergy and in excess of 104,000 employees.
In the early days of The Salvation Army,
founder William Booth said, “While women
weep, as they do now, I’ll fight; while little
children go hungry, as they do now, I’ll fight;
while men go to prison, as they do now,
I’ll fight; while there is a drunkard left,
while there is a poor lost girl upon the streets,
while there remains one dark soul without the
light of God, I’ll fight—I’ll fight to the very end.”
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 53

CANDLEWOOD
SUITES
The Candlewood Suites
chain was organized in 1995
by Jack Deboer, considered
the forefather of the extended
stay segment of the hotel
industry. Deboer also founded
the Residence Inn and was
cofounder of the Summerfield
Suites chain.
The first Candlewood Suites
hotel was built on North
Webb Road in Wichita, Kansas,
and opened in 1996. These
extended-stay hotels focus
primarily on rate-sensitive business travelers
who typically stay only during the week.
Amenities provided by Candlewood Suites
such as the one in Clearwater include spacious
suites with fully equipped kitchens, free
local calls, voice mail, data ports and two
phone lines, an onsite convenience store, the
Candlewood Cupboard, with food
items at a low price, a free entertainment
library of CDs and videos,
complimentary guest laundry, a free
twenty-four hour exercise facility,
free fax service and an outdoor pool
and barbecue gazebo.
At the Candlewood Suites in
Clearwater, which was extensively
remodeled in 2010, guests may
unwind after a long day at the office
in the well-equipped fitness center.
You can watch your favorite
television show while utilizing one
of our treadmills or get a good workout on the
weight machine, stationary bike or stair climber.
Housekeeping and laundry
services include weekly
housekeeping, onsite washer/dryers,
and dry cleaning
and laundry pick up with
same-day dry cleaning.
Services available in the
Business Center include
copying, courier service,
email and Internet, facsimile,
and printing. In addition,
PCs are available.
Candlewood Suites is
focused on comfort, space
and value. Guests find
spacious studio and onebedroom
suites, each with its own fully
equipped kitchen, large workspace, overstuffed
recliner, VCR and/or DVD and CD player,
complimentary high-speed Internet access and
telephones with voicemail and free local calls.
54 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

The complimentary fitness center and guest
laundry are open around the clock and the
Candlewood Cupboard is open twenty-four
hours for snacks, refreshments, entrees and
other necessities. Best of all, Candlewood Suites
offer guests all these features
at a very comfortable price.
Candlewood Suites were
acquired by IHG in January
2004. There are now 287
Candlewood Suites hotels
currently open with 150
others in the pipeline.
IHG is an international
hotel company whose goal
is creating Great Hotels
Guests Love. IHG properties
have more guest rooms
than any other hotel company
in the world—more than
652,000 rooms in more
than 4,500 hotels in over
100 countries. Candlewood
Suites guests book more than
160 million stays in IHG
hotels each year.
IHG operates seven hotel
brands: InterContinental,
Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo,
Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn
Express, Staybridge Suites
and Candlewood Suites.
To commemorate its
tenth anniversary in 2006,
Candlewood Suites joined
forces with Habitat for
Humanity to create home ownership opportunities
for low-income families. Candlewood Suites
committed to build ten houses over the
next three years in the U.S., Latin America
and India.
The first house was completed in
Dallas, Texas, in 2006 and the second
was completed in 2007 in Alcozauca,
Mexico. Candlewood Suites will also
build Habitat houses in Atlanta,
Charlotte, Chicago, Detroit, Houston,
Richmond, and Wichita and outside
the United States in India. Locally,
Candlewood Suites is also active in the
Give Kids the World program.
The Candlewood Suites Clearwater is
conveniently located at 13231 Forty-ninth
Street North. For more information, visit
www.candlewoodsuites.com/clearwaterfl.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 55

PRESTIGE
SPA COVERS
After spending the first half of his professional
life learning nearly every aspect of the swimming
pool and spa industry, Jim Wiley launched
a new venture in 1992, working in the one
branch of the business he knew nothing about.
“I was never involved with the manufacture
of spa covers,” said Wiley. “So when I started
making spa covers, I learned as I went.”
He learned his lessons well because his
company Prestige Spa Covers, which is based
in Clearwater, has experienced annual growth
going into its twentieth year in business.
Wiley started small, getting paid for a cover
and using those funds to order the materials for
the next one. To keep money coming in, he also
started a spa service company. He had subcontractors
do the sewing and Wiley hired a person
to help run the office, but everything else was
on his shoulders. He made all the deliveries, did
the installations, whatever was necessary to get
the work done.
Originally, Prestige was formed to supply
covers to a couple of dealers and to a company
that Wiley’s brothers, Brian, Charley and Bob
started. It was called Hydro Spa and was based
in Clearwater. The brothers had all worked at
National Equipment Manufacturing Company
(NEMCO), the business started by their parents,
Robert and Brigitte Wiley, until they retired.
While Prestige was new to the pool and
spa industry, the Wiley name was well known
in the industry. Wiley had spent all of his
professional life in manufacturing so he quickly
learned the ropes of spa cover fabrication.
After starting in a small facility in Clearwater,
Wiley sold the spa service company and in
1999 moved to a smaller back building at
the current Prestige address, which is at 13000
Automobile Boulevard in Clearwater.
The company built its reputation for providing
quality custom covers at a good price and, most
importantly, for delivering orders quickly. “The
slogan we have is ‘Whatever it takes,’” said Wiley.
Today, what separates Prestige Spa Covers
from its competition is that Wiley is a forward
thinker who, in 1999, started to expand to the
current 80,000 square foot facility and took
the business to full automation. Today all
orders come in through a computerized system.
The computer selects the colors and cuts the
patterns using CAD software. An order is carried
on an overhead conveyor and delivered to
each station. All sewing is still done by hand
and depending on the season, the company
employs anywhere form sixty-five to ninety
people, many of whom Wiley said have been
with Prestige for more than ten years. Being
centrally located in Pinellas County makes the
company attractive to potential employees from
even the farthest points of the region.
56 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

“Our business is very custom.
You can order a cover from
us that can be light blue with a
skirt and round corners and it’s
on its way to the consumer in
three days. That’s something no
one can match,” said Wiley.
Prestige offers six different
covers in fourteen color options,
ranging from the more traditional
Classic series to the Walk On
that can hold two adults. With
more than 1,000 patterns in
stock, the company can make a
cover to fit virtually any spa.
The covers are made with
marine-grade vinyl and energy
efficient polystyrene inserts
that are heat-sealed with a moisture barrier to
resist water. The covers carry a five year warranty
against water absorption. Inhibitors in the
vinyl and thread inhibit UV ray penetration.
Childproof locking tie-downs provide safety for
families. The company sells factory direct,
through distributors, at retail outlets and to spa
service businesses.
Even with the automation, Wiley knows that
his company would not succeed without people.
Among the key personnel he wishes to
acknowledge for their contributions to Prestige
Spa Covers are Sales and Operations Manager
Kelli Clarke, Accounting Manager Angela Kim
and Plant Manager Johnny Davis. “These are
the individuals who helped make the company
grow,” said Wiley.
Clarke, a twelve year veteran, said that
Prestige functions as a team environment and
the employees have definitely bought into
Wiley’s “whatever it takes” motto. “We’re very
driven. We’re not the type of company that
says, ‘No,’” she said. “If there’s an issue, we get
together to get it done.”
She also said that Wiley is every bit the
hands-on company president. “Jim is always
there, always available, whether it’s a simple
question or a difficult task,” said Clarke. “If
there’s something that has to be done, he’s
not above doing it. He’ll cut foam, he’ll fix
machines.” When new equipment is brought in,
Wiley is often the one running the wires to
complete the installation.
Clarke, whose primary focus is sales,
explained that all employees are cross-trained.
Prestige attends national and international
trade shows for the pool and spa industries and
Clarke proudly pointed out that nearly seventyfive
percent of the business comes from word of
mouth and referrals.
She praised Wiley’s
foresight for taking
Prestige automated,
explaining that when
she started and the
company was growing
by giant steps, all
the invoicing and
order processing was
still done by hand.
“We’ve come a long
way,” said Clarke.
A company that is also generous with its good
fortune, Prestige Spa Covers donates to a number
of charities in Pinellas County including the
Boy Scouts (Wiley’s son is an Eagle Scout), Girl
Scouts, Make-A-wish and more. The company’s
quality products and follow-up service have
resulted in many vendor-of-the-year awards
from distributors and spa manufactures.
Wiley plans to continue to grow Prestige Spa
Covers and he is looking at adding manufacturing
facilities around the country. In 2012 the
company will celebrate its twentieth year in
business. Prestige hopes to continue its growth
in Pinellas County for many years to come.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 57

ST. PETERSBURG
COLLEGE
Clockwise, starting from top, left:
President Bill Law.
The first graduating class at
the Mirror Lake site in 1929
(the college opened in 1927).
The Downtown Center.
For St. Petersburg students in the 1920s,
higher education was available only to those
who could afford to travel to distant cities to
complete their studies. This inspired a group of
concerned St. Petersburg business and political
leaders to promote the need for a local
institution of higher learning to provide job
skills to local residents, especially those of
modest means.
In September 1927, Florida’s first two-year
institution of higher education, St. Petersburg
Junior College, opened in an unused wing of the
then-new St. Petersburg High School and became
the first college established on Florida’s west coast.
Enrollment in the first class was 102 students.
There were fourteen faculty members, some with
master’s degrees from such prestigious universities
as Harvard, Columbia, and Vanderbilt.
The far-sighted leaders who led the movement
to create the school included George Lynch, the
school superintendent for St. Petersburg Public
Schools, who also served as president of the
college. Others included L. Chauncey Brown,
publisher of the St. Petersburg Evening Independent
newspaper, insurance executive Frank Robinson,
merchant Robert Walden, Mrs. H. C. Case, a
housewife, attorney Frederick Francke, and utility
official George W. Wylie. This group became the
first members of the College Board of Governors.
After the first four months of classes, the college
moved downtown to a building near Mirror
Lake at Second Avenue and Fifth Street North.
The school’s first ‘athletic event’ was a
marble tournament in 1928, in which the
sophomores defeated the freshmen. Basketball,
tennis and football teams soon followed. A
May Fete, organized by English instructor
Marguerite B. Homes, was produced in 1928.
A College Endowment Fund was established
after $50,000 in scholarship money was
contributed by an anonymous donor.
The first class graduated from St. Petersburg
Junior College in 1929. Half of the forty-eight
graduating students received Florida teaching
certificates along with their diplomas.
George Lynch was succeeded as president of
the college by Robert Reed in 1935. Other
presidents of the institution have included
Roland Wakefield (1944-1950); Michael Bennett
(1950-1976); Carl M. Kuttler, Jr., (1976-2010);
and William D. Law, Jr., (2010-present).
St. Petersburg College has grown tremendously
in its eighty-five years and enrollment for
fall 2011 included nearly 34,000 students
on nine campuses and learning sites, the
largest ever for a single semester.
The first campus still in existence is
the St. Petersburg/Gibbs Campus on
the corner of Sixty-Sixth Street and
Fifth Avenue in St. Petersburg. It
was established in 1937. In 1965 the
predominantly African-American Gibbs
College merged with St. Petersburg
Junior College. Also that year, a new
campus opened on Drew Street in
Clearwater. By 1970 classes were also
being offered at a site in Tarpon Springs.
The Health Education Center on Sixty-
Sixth Street in Pinellas Park opened in
1981 in a former Doc Webb drug store.
The Allstate Center for Police Training
opened in 1988 on Thirty-Fourth Street
58 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

in a former headquarters for Allstate Insurance.
The Seminole Campus opened in 1998,
followed by the Downtown Center in
St. Petersburg in 2005 and the Midtown Center,
also in St. Petersburg, in 2003.
In 2001 the State Legislature approved a
bill that allowed St. Petersburg Junior College
to offer three baccalaureate degrees—in
Education, Nursing and Technology
Management. At that time, the
name of the school was changed to
St. Petersburg College.
Today, the college offers twentyfour
baccalaureate degrees and
numerous programs leading to
A.A., A.S., A.A.S. degrees and
certificates. Students may also
study for masters and doctoral
degrees through SPC’s University
Partnership Center.
In 2004, St. Petersburg College
and the Pinellas County School
District established a charter high
school for exceptionally motivated
tenth through twelfth graders on
the St. Petersburg/Gibbs Campus.
The high school, St. Petersburg
Collegiate High School, has been
ranked as one of the top ten high
schools in the state since its inception and has
always received a grade of A.
Scholarships are offered to deserving students
through the St. Petersburg College Foundation,
which is supported by alumni, corporations,
area businesses, college staff and others.
For more information about St. Petersburg
College, visit www.spcollege.edu.
Above: Students at the
St. Petersburg/Gibbs Campus.
Below: SPC has been a leader in using
technology in the classroom.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 59

TSE INDUSTRIES,
INC.
Technical Sales & Engineering’s seven
employees in front of the firm’s five
thousand square foot building in
St. Petersburg, 1975. Helen Klingel is
on the left.
Clearwater’s TSE Industries, Inc., a custom
rubber manufacturer, plastics fabricator, and
specialty chemical manufacturer, has prospered
for more than half-a-century by constantly
adapting to a changing economy.
The company began as a distributor of newly
developed polymer materials. Today, TSE manufactures
an array of products ranging from
flexible rubber tubing for the medical industry
to plastics used for packaging food. The
company also produces conveyor components,
specialty chemicals, adhesives, composites and
Millathane ® millable urethane rubber.
TSE began in 1959, when Walter, Sr., and
Helen Klingel, along with their two sons, Walt,
Jr., and Rob, moved to Florida to get away from
the cold New Jersey winters. The family settled
in St. Petersburg, where Walter tried to sell vacuum
cleaners door-to-door while getting his
Realtors license. However, St. Petersburg was in
recession at the time and Walter found it difficult
to make a living.
In 1960, Walt and
Helen decided the best
way to cope with the
sour economy was to
start their own business,
so they took their last
$2,000 and started
Technical Sales Co. in a
500 square foot warehouse
in Seminole. Sales
that first year totaled
only $12,000, but their
vision and entrepreneurial
spirit has developed into a complex of more
than 200,000 square feet with 250 employees
and annual sales of more than $60 million.
In 1962 only a few companies in Florida
were promoting newly developed polymer
materials. Technical Sales Co. was designed to
help these companies by locating a polymer
material that would solve their problem or create
an improved finished product. It also
became evident that the sales company should
distribute the newly developed polymers.
From 1960 until 1962, Technical Sales was
devoted primarily to the sales and distribution
of industrial plastics and related lines for
Florida’s rapidly growing aerospace and citrus
producing industries. In 1962, Technical Sales
Co. became a Florida corporation and the name
was changed to Technical Sales and Engineering
Company, Inc. At the time, annual sales were
$47,000 and growing steadily.
During this period, Walter, Jr., became a
part-time employee while majoring in Business
Administration at the University of South
Florida. He joined the firm full-time upon graduation
as an administrative and sales manager.
Annual sales had grown to $140,000 in 1968
but it became evident that future growth depended
on the company becoming a manufacturer as
well as a distributor of industrial plastics.
Walter, Sr., received his degree from Newark
College of Engineering as a polymer engineer
specializing as a research chemist in the rubber
and plastic field. This proved to be very beneficial
in developmental work with a new type of
synthetic rubber known as polyurethane.
Demand for this new product increased to
the point that Technical Sales and Engineering
established Liberty Rubber Company to produce
finished parts. Now, in addition to manufacturing
urethane parts, Liberty Rubber could
process all natural and synthetic elastomers
related to the rubber field, such as neoprene,
nitrile and silicone.
By 1971 sales had increased to $380,000 and
Walt and Helen’s younger son, Rob, joined the
firm. He graduated from Elon College with a
degree in Biology and Chemistry and his initial
responsibilities with the company were in
the manufacturing, research and development
of elastomers.
Annual sales neared $1 million in 1976 and
an increase in the demand for urethane elastomers
made it imperative to secure a reliable
source of elastomer. In August 1976, TSE signed
a contract with Witco Chemical Corp. to purchase
their urethane manufacturing department.
TSE called this new polyurethane Millathane,
and used it primarily for its own internal use in
the manufacture of finished parts.
Two years later, sales had zoomed to $1.6
million and the company went worldwide with
a new product line called Millathane. Demand
for Millathane was so great that a separate manufacturing
facility was built in 1980.
As growth continued, the company purchased
a rubber extrusion department from
Oliver Rubber Company in 1983. That same
60 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

year, the first injection rubber molding press
was purchased to manufacture finished parts
for the U.S. Air Force.
In 1984, with sales at $4.6 million, the company
moved into a new 61,000 square foot
manufacturing facility and the company name
was changed to TSE Industries, Inc.
TSE achieved a moment of fame when
Nike asked the company to develop a clear
polyurethane that could be molded to the bottom
of their new Air Jordan shoes. Nike purchased
more than 1.5 million pounds of
Millathane in 1989, and increased the order
even more the following year.
In 1992, TSE developed Crystal, a new
water-based mold release, to compete against
solvent type silicone releases. It had become
clear that solvent types had to be replaced by
more environmentally friendly release agents.
Also in 1992, TSE became a manufacturer of
reactive hot melt adhesives for a Fortune 500
company. This investment made TSE the largest
producer of reactive hot melt adhesives in the
United States.
In 1993, TSE purchased the product line
C-Flex, and set up a sister company, CPT, to
manufacture this medical grade tubing in a
separate facility adjacent to TSE.
Later, in 1999, the founder of TSE Industries,
Walter, Sr., passed away at the age of eighty-six.
His wife, Helen passed away in 2003, also at the
age of eighty-six. Walter, Jr., retired in 1991 to
enjoy fishing. The third generation of the
Klingel family, represented by Rob and Diane’s
sons, Rob, Jr., Rick, and Brad Klingel, started
working at TSE in 2001.
New products have continued to spur the
growth of TSE in recent years, including a joint
venture with a German company, Okulen, to
produce ultra-high molecule weight polyethylene,
a plastic used to produce finished products
for the packaging, food, and medical industries
at the company’s Florida plant. Plus Specialty
Chemicals has developed a new composite urethane
for the spa, tub, boat, and automotive
industries that is environmentally friendly and
cost effective.
In 2007, CPT was sold for multiples of its
original investment to a global corporation, and
in 2008, Crystal was doing so well that it was
sold to a large competitor of a similar product.
This enabled TSE to be debt-free and all TSE
employees celebrated a mortgage burning at the
annual outing at Busch Gardens.
2012 marks TSE’s fiftieth anniversary and
Rob, Jr., Rick, and Brad are poised to take the
company to even higher levels, including the
opening of a manufacturing facility in mainland
China. TSE will continue to provide Technology,
Service and Experience to the world’s businesses
for the next fifty years.
Top: A 2011 aerial view of
TSE Plant 1 in Clearwater.
The 85,000 square foot building
houses seventy-five employees.
Above: A 2011 aerial view of
TSE Plant 2 in Clearwater.
One hundred sixty employees work in
the 125,000 square foot building.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 61

CITY OF
CLEARWATER
The progressive city of Clearwater
is committed to enhancing the lives
of its residents while preserving a
heritage rich in culture and exquisite
in landscape.
Although permanent settlement in
the area did not begin until the early
1830s, the tropical paradise that
became Clearwater was first explored
by the Spanish in 1528; that is 37
years before St. Augustine, 79 years
before Jamestown, and 92 years before
the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.
Fort Harrison was built by the
U.S. Army in 1841 on the bluffs overlooking
Clear Water Harbor and was considered a
perfect place for an army hospital where
soldiers could recuperate from wounds
received during the Seminole Indian Wars.
The Federal Armed Occupation Act of 1842
granted 160 acres to those who would bear
arms against the still-hostile Native Americans
and cultivate the land. James Stevens became
the first of the early homesteaders, followed
soon by Samuel Stevenson and James
McMullen and his six brothers.
The early settlement grew slowly as an agriculture
and fishing community. Most settlers
grew vegetables and cotton, and fish were plentiful.
Residents had limited means of transportation
using horse-and-buggies, wagons,
boats and their own two feet. Early settlers
suffered through a hurricane in 1846, followed
by another vicious storm in 1848. Fire was a
significant threat and, in 1891, a bucket
brigade saved many wooden buildings on
Cleveland Street. Almost an entire block was
destroyed in the Big Fire of 1910.
Clear Water Harbor managed to survive
despite hardships, and by the time the first
narrow gauge railroad was built in 1888, about
eighteen families lived in the community. Clear
Water Harbor was incorporated in 1891,
Clearwater Harbor received a special charter
in 1897, and “Harbor” was dropped from the
name in 1906. The Florida legislature created
Pinellas County in 1911 and Clearwater was
designated the county seat.
Clearwater grew steadily throughout the
early part of the twentieth century as tourists
and new residents were drawn to the area
because of the climate, beaches, and business
opportunities. Population continued to
climb steadily, despite the economic
hardships of the depression years, and by
the end of World War II, Clearwater had
become well known for its white, sandy
beaches, pleasant weather and vigorous
economic activity.
Clearwater’s population has grown from
343 in 1900 to approximately 112,000
today. An additional twenty thousand
winter residents swell the population each
year. Fun and sun lovers come from around
the world to enjoy the attractions of
Clearwater and many have discovered it
is an even better place to live. Clearwater is
a friendly and socially responsive community,
and the City government is economically
active and environmentally conscious.
62 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

BAYFRONT
MEDICAL
CENTER
For more than one hundred years, Bayfront
Medical Center has provided exceptional
healthcare for all we serve.
Bayfront, part of Bayfront Health System and
St. Petersburg’s longest-standing not-for-profit
teaching hospital, is recognized as a center of
excellence for trauma, obstetrics and gynecology,
rehabilitation, cancer care, cardiology,
orthopedics and neurosciences. Our 2,340
team members, nearly 600 of the community’s
best physicians, and thousands of patients
choose excellence when they choose Bayfront.
Bayfront was originally organized as the
St. Petersburg Sanitarium in 1906 and, in 1910,
was re-designated as the Good Samaritan
Hospital; an early predecessor to what is now
Bayfront Medical Center.
By 1923 the hospital grew to more than sixty
beds and changed its name to Mound Park
Hospital. During World War II, many of Mound
Park’s staff members displayed their passion for
healthcare by serving in the Cadet Nurse Corps.
In 1952 a new Mound Park Hospital brought
251 additional beds to St. Petersburg. The hospital
teamed with such pioneers as Dr. Fred W. Alsup
to help break down the walls of racial segregation
and begin integrating patients of differing racial
backgrounds within the healthcare field.
In 1968, Bayfront Medical Center was officially
opened as St. Petersburg’s not-for-profit
hospital. Bayfront brought high-speed patient
transportation to the area in 1986 with Bayflite,
serving over 37,000 patients to this day. Since
Bayflite’s debut, Bayfront has been widely recognized
as home to the largest hospital-based,
emergency helicopter program in the Southeast.
Bayflite’s air-medical program now serves
eighteen counties in West Central Florida and
also provides hospital-to-hospital transport of
critically ill infants, children and adults.
Bayfront Medical Center’s advancements
continue. In 2007, Bayfront expanded its
cardiovascular services by opening the
freestanding James Heart Center. In 2010,
Bayfront Baby Place, a comprehensive obstetrical
service, relocated to the new neighboring
All Children’s Hospital. Bayfront is also
recognized for its excellence for trauma and for
being Pinellas County’s only trauma center.
Beyond clinical care,
Bayfront strives to be a
model corporate citizen,
positively impacting our
community in a dynamic
and meaningful way. We
have made a commitment
to generously support
other organizations that
share our mission and
values. In 2010, Bayfront
provided $26.8 million
in uncompensated care to
our community and supports
more than fifty
community organizations.
Bayfront’s mission is
quality for all we serve.
We will continue to distinguish our organization
as the community’s preeminent choice for
healthcare services of the highest quality,
defined by leading practices that put patients
and families first.
Above: In 1923, the hospital grew to
more than sixty beds and changed its
name to Mound Park Hospital.
During World War II, many of the
staff members served in the Cadet
Nurse Corps.
Below: Bayflite, Bayfront’s emergency
air-medical program, now serves
eighteen counties in West Central
Florida and is regarded as the largest
in the Southeast.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 63

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J AMES A NTHONY S CHNUR
A native and lifelong resident of Pinellas County, James Anthony Schnur has witnessed amazing transformations in his community.
After completing Associate of Arts credentials at both the University of Tampa and St. Petersburg Junior College, Schnur earned a
bachelor’s degree in History at the University of South Florida (USF). He later completed master’s degrees in History and Library
Science at USF. Jim won the President’s Prize for the best undergraduate essay in Florida History from the Florida Historical Society
in 1989, then became the only person to have won both undergraduate and graduate recognition when he was awarded the
LeRoy Collins Prize for best graduate history essay for two consecutive years, in 1991 and 1992. Also in 1991, Schnur received the
Pinellas County Historical Society’s annual scholarship, starting a long relationship between Schnur and that organization that
continues to this day. Jim has held many offices in the county historical society, including president or acting president during the
years, 1994-1996, 2005-2007, and 2009.
Schnur shares his love of history and his desire to teach research skills with the community. He has served as a reference librarian,
head of adult services, and assistant library director at two Pinellas County public libraries. Since 1996, he has taught history courses
as an adjunct member of the faculty at Eckerd College’s Program for Experienced Learners (PEL). In addition to working as a
center administrator and academic advisor for PEL, he has conducted lifelong learning classes on a variety of history topics for
Eckerd College’s Senior College and Elderhostel (now known as “Road Scholar”). Beginning in 2002, Schnur became the archivist
and special collections librarian at the Nelson Poynter Memorial Library at University of South Florida St. Petersburg (USFSP). His
responsibilities include preserving local and regional history collections, assisting researchers from the university and community,
and providing academic support to USFSP’s Master of Liberal Arts in Florida Studies, the only degree of its kind in the State of
Florida. He also has taught undergraduate courses in U.S. and Florida history at USFSP, as well as a graduate course in Archival
Management through the University of South Florida’s School of Information in Tampa, as an adjunct member of the teaching faculty.
In addition to his many lectures and public programs, Schnur has shared his research of Florida history through publications. He has
previously served as the editor for Punta Pinal, a newsletter formerly published by the Pinellas County Historical Society. He currently
assists the Florida History Society’s editor by compiling notable Florida history scholarship in publication for an annual bibliographic
essay in the Florida Historical Quarterly. He has written articles, book reviews, and book chapters in areas such as Florida history and
oral history. His photographic history on Largo, part of Arcadia Publishing’s Images of America Series, was released March 2011.
An avid fan of the Tampa Bay Rays, Schnur enjoys summers at his beloved perch in Tropicana Field. Throughout the year, Schnur
and his wife also enjoy exploring the many beautiful parks and trails in the Tampa Bay region.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
C HRISTOPHER
S TILL
A reprint of Patriot and Warrior by Christopher Still, oil on canvas 126 x 38 inches, appears on the front cover. This was one of
ten paintings commissioned by the Florida House of Representatives. The name “Seminole” translates to “free people” and evolved
from the Spanish word, cimmarones. It is a fitting name for these proud people who shared a common desire to be free of domination.
The Treaty of Moultrie Creek set apart four million acres of land south of Ocala as Indian Territory and the Seminoles were relocated
to make way for more U.S. settlers. When the Second Seminole War erupted many bands refused to relocate yet again to presentday
Oklahoma. The warrior Osceola led the Indian uprising, beginning the longest, most costly Indian war in U.S. history. When the
artist visited Osceola’s grave in South Carolina his headstone read “Patriot and Warrior.”
Christopher Still is a nationally respected artist and native of Pinellas County, Florida. He is a graduate of the Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts with continued studies in Europe. Most notable are his ten murals commissioned by the Florida House of
Representatives depicting Florida’s historic and natural beauty. His artwork is featured in Florida’s 2013 Viva Florida 500 celebration
celebrating the 500 year anniversary of Ponce de Leon’s east coast Florida landing in 1513. He is an inductee of the Florida Artists
Hall of Fame.
www.christopherstill.com
64 ✦ HISTORIC PINELLAS COUNTY

Leadership Sponsor
Top: The Taylor Lake Reservoir, now surrounded by a beautiful county park,
once sustained citrus groves in the area south of Largo.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAMES A. SCHNUR.
Above: Peering into the limestone cavern of Wall Springs, some people claim
that they see a young, pretty woman in the silhouette. The former beach
and bathing area are now part of the county park system.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAMES A. SCHNUR.
Front cover: Patriot and Warrior. 2002. Oil on canvas, 126 x 48 inches.
PAINTING COURTESY OF CHRISTOPHER STILL.
$24.95
ISBN: 9781935377917
Historical Publishing Network