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My trip to Tampa (January 1994)

Tampa

Domz
2004-04-06 19:49:10

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The city, in 1990, has a population of 280,015. I make my first visit to Tampa with a friend in 1994, even though I have lived in Gainesville since 1985 and Tampa is only 2 hours away. We are here to attend a state "rail-trail" conference. After the conference Saturday, we ride our bikes on the highly popular Pinellas Rail-Trail (a person we met on the trail tells us the trail is the best thing the county had ever done), then head to Pinellas Park for their "old-tyme dance." (squares, circles, contras)

Tampa is the third largest city in the state. In 1528, Panfilo de Narvaez negotiated a peace treaty with the Indians, but hostility between the Indians and whites remained a barrier to settlement for 200 years. In 1864, the city was captured by Union troops during the Civil War. The University of Tampa (established in 1931) is housed in a hotel modeled after the Alhambra in Spain, and the University of South Florida is also in the city, and was established in 1956.

Ybor City

On a Friday night, we take in some sight-seeing in Hyde Park and Ybor City (the two redevelopment areas where the City is trying to rejuvenate its downtown in the face of suburban sprawl). We go to nightclubs at the restored Ybor City, a city that historically was the king of cigar making—beginning in the 1880s—in Florida (indeed, the city is sometimes called the "cigar capital of America") and still retains a lot of charm due to a traditionally designed downtown area. Here we enjoy some great music.

Built in 1886 by Spanish immigrant Vicente Martinez Ybor, who came from Key West. Ybor found and cleared a 40-acre tract of scrub and pine land east of Tampa, and, in 1886, built what was then the largest cigar factory in the world (Ybor Square). He drew other cigar factories to the site, and thousands of immigrant Cuban cigar makers. Later, a smaller number of Spanish and Italian workers arrived. By 1900, the immigrants ...