When Spanish explorers first arrived in the Tampa Bay region in , they encountered a native civilization that had flourished there for at least 3, years. Several different tribes dominated the Gulf Coast, including the Tocobaga, the Timucua, the Apalachee, and the Caloosa also spelled Calusa. It was a Caloosa village called Tanpa a name meaning "stick of fire" that eventually became known to the Spanish as Tampa. Annihilated by an onslaught of European diseases against which they had no immunity, the various Tampa Bay tribes had all but vanished by Raiding parties comprised of English colonists from the north and members of other Indian tribes destroyed the few remaining settlements.
Desolate and uninhabited, the Tampa Bay region was held briefly by the British in the late s, then once again became a Spanish possession after the American Revolution. By this time, northern Florida had become a haven for displaced Seminole Indians and runaway black slaves from nearby southern states.
Because white settlers were eager to move into the region and grow cotton, the federal government decided to relocate the Indians further south, around Tampa Bay. A fort was established on the eastern shore of the Hillsborough River to house the soldiers sent there to keep an eye on the angry Seminoles.
Erected in and named Fort Brooke after the army colonel in command , it was the first permanent, modern settlement on the site of present-day Tampa. The s and s were marked by repeated violent conflicts between the Seminoles and white soldiers and settlers. For the next 50 years, until the early s, Oldsmar remained a sparsely populated backwater town, as the rest of the Tampa Bay area grew up around it. But all that changed in , when the LaMonte-Shimberg Corporation bought a acre dairy farm from the D.
By the time they were done in , LaMonte-Shimberg had built and sold! Upper Tampa Bay … Today! Today, more than , people live in the Upper Tampa Bay area, which stretches from U. City re-incorporated in July 15, Archaeological evidence indicates the shores of Tampa Bay were inhabited by indigenous peoples for thousands of years. The Safety Harbor culture developed in the area around the year AD, and the descendant Tocobaga and Pohoy chiefdoms were living in or near the current city limits of Tampa when the area was first visited by Spanish explorers in the 16th century.
Interactions between native peoples and the Spanish were brief and often violent, and although the newcomers did not stay for long, they introduced European diseases which brought the collapse of native societies across the Florida peninsula over the ensuing decades.
Although Spain claimed all of Florida and beyond as part of New Spain, it did not found a colony on the west coast. After the disappearance of the indigenous populations, there were no permanent settlements in the Tampa Bay area until after the United States acquired Florida from Spain in The first civilian residents were pioneer ranchers and farmers who settled near the fort for protection from the nearby Seminole population.
The town grew slowly, and had become a minor shipping port for cattle and citrus by the time of the United States Civil War. Tampa Bay was blockaded by the United States Navy during the war, and Tampa fell into a long period of economic stagnation that continued long after the war ended. The situation finally improved in the s, when the first railroad links, the discovery of phosphate, and the arrival of the cigar industry jump-started its development, helping Tampa to grow from an isolated village with less than residents in to a bustling city of over 30, by the early s.
The etymology of the name is unclear. This might be a reference to the many lightning strikes that the area receives during the summer months. A later Spanish expedition did not notice the mouth of Charlotte Harbor while sailing north along the west coast of Florida and assumed that the current Tampa Bay was the bay they sought, thus accidentally transferring the name on Spanish navigational charts.
Not much is known about the cultures who called the Tampa Bay area home before European contact. When Spanish explorers arrived in the s, they found Tocobaga villages around the northern half of Tampa Bay and Calusa villages along the southern portion of the bay.
The native inhabitants repulsed any Spanish attempt to establish a permanent settlement or convert them to Catholicism. The newcomers brought with them infectious diseases, resulting in a total collapse of the native cultures of Florida. The Tampa area was depopulated and ignored for more than years. In the midth century, events in American colonies drove the Seminole people into northern Florida.
During this period, the Tampa area had only a handful of residents: Cuban and Native American fishermen. After purchasing Florida from Spain in , the United States built forts and trading posts in the new territory. Tampa was initially an isolated frontier outpost.
The sparse civilian population practically abandoned the area during the Second Seminole War from to , after which the Seminoles were forced out and many settlers returned. Florida became the 27th state in
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