The Most Impossible Rise of a City Ever: Tampa, Florida

In 1880, Tampa, Florida had 720 residents and no railroad. Its citizens had voted to dissolve their own government. Within twenty years it would be the Cigar Capital of the World, home to the most extravagant hotel in the American South, and the staging ground for the Spanish-American War. This is the story of how a Connecticut railroad baron, a fugitive Cuban cigar maker, and a phosphate strike in the Florida interior converged on a dying Gulf Coast village at almost the same moment — and built a city that had no business existing. From Henry Plant's $3 million Moorish palace to the lectors who read Victor Hugo on the factory floor, from the first commercial airline flight in history to D.P. Davis dredging an island out of Tampa Bay, this is the most improbable rise of any American city ever. Sources: Henry B. Plant Museum — History of the Tampa Bay Hotel (plantmuseum.com) Library of Congress — Birth of Ybor City, the Cigar Capital of the World (guides.loc.gov) National Park Service — Ybor City Historic District (nps.gov) Tampa Theatre — History (tampatheatre.org) Florida Memory, State Library and Archives of Florida — Florida and the Spanish-American War of 1898 (floridamemory.com) Tampa Bay History Center / Tampa Magazine — The History of Davis Islands (tampamagazines.com)