Tampa, FL

Although Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon arrived at Tampa Bay in 1513, the Spanish Empire focused most of its attention on Florida’s east coast. The area around Tampa remained largely uninhabited by European-Americans until the early 19^th century. In 1824, three years after the United States purchased Florida from Spain, four companies of U.S. Army troops established Fort Brooke to protect the strategically important harbor. Nonetheless, development of the community was limited until the conclusion of the Second Seminole War in the early 1840s.

Plagued by yellow fever and hampered by tenuous overland links, Tampa did not really prosper until phosphate was discovered in the Bone Valley in 1883. The mineral, vital in the production of fertilizers and many other products, was soon shipped northwest to the Port of Tampa in great quantity. The coming of Henry Plant’s Atlantic Coast Line Railroad finally provided a reliable overland connection that allowed fish and phosphate to be sent north.

In the 1880s, the Tampa Board of Trade was able to convince Cuban cigar manufacturer Vincente Martinez Ybor to move his operations from Key West to Tampa. Ybor built workshops and hundreds of homes for his employees that now constitute an historic district within Tampa. Much of the prized tobacco was shipped to the Ybor factory directly from Cuba. The influx of people to the area, particularly Cuban and Spanish cigar workers, helped to build up the town.

Tampa Union Station opened on May 15, 1912 and was built to serve the Atlantic Coast Line, the Seaboard Air Line, and the Tampa Northern railroads. Constructed of brick with stone trim, it was designed by architect J.F. Leitner in the Italian Renaissance style. Although listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, it deteriorated and was closed ten years later. The Amtrak office moved to a prefabricated structure adjacent to the old station.

The Tampa Union Station Preservation and Redevelopment Corporation took over the depot in 1991 from CSX, the successor to the Atlantic Coast and Seaboard railroads. The organization raised more than $4 million for the restoration of the terminal and baggage building. During the course of the two year project, abandoned documents from the Pullman Company, the Tampa Union Station Company, and the Seaboard Air Line were discovered and archived for researchers. CSX donated the station to the city in 1999. In September 2008, a group of private donors created a permanent endowment for the care and upkeep of the station.