Many people want to feel some sort of connection to the history of the city they're moving to, whether they're living in a restored Victorian home or a brand new condo. Toronto waterfront warehouses with their old ads for breweries and factories provide a sense of atmosphere there, but what about St. Petersburg, Florida? How can you expect to connect with the past there? In fact, there are plenty of reminders of bygone days in St. Petersburg, both in the form of architecture and in archaeological sites and museums. To help you get a quick overview before you dive right in, we've created this article.
Historical evidence from the very origins of human habitation in an area isn't always easy to come by right in the open. Primitive tents and huts don't stand the test of time the way Cabbagetown real estate does so we must find out about these periods through the unearthing of archaeological evidence. In Pinellas County, where St. Petersburg would later be located, historical artifacts suggest there were villages belonging to an unknown tribe of Native Americans. When Spanish explorers Navaez and DeSoto came through the area, they reported seeing the camps, and the skeletons of some of their men who were killed by Natives were later found by archaeologists.
Europeans arrived in the area to stay in 1843, founding a small settlement on Maximo Point that was later washed away by a hurricane (obviously housing at the time wasn't as sturdy as condominiums in Toronto are today. A few years afterward farmers arrived with cattle and citrus trees and began to extract a living from the St. Petersburg soil. The first house was built in 1856. The settlement wasn't big enough to attract much attention from the Union forces during the Civil War, though some farms in the Big Bayou area were raided for supplies and subsequently burned.
The town of St. Petersburg was created between 1876 and 1888 when Detroit farmer John C. Williams and Russian railroad entrepreneur Peter Demens reached an arrangement that would benefit them both: Demens needed a terminus for his railroad, and Williams needed transport to his town. They both passed up the Burlington, Ontario home for sale market and settled in St. Petersburg, which was named for Demens' hometown in Russia. Growth of the town was slow, but was helped along by the balmy weather, which made it an attractive vacation destination.
The great freeze of 1894 effectively put an end to farming in St. Petersburg, which opened the economy up for other businesses like Henry Hibbs' fish wholesaling company, and later, services like aqua finishing solutions. Dredging opened up the harbor to shipping in 1908 and in 1914 airline service arrived in the form of a flying boat to Tampa. It was the 1950s before the town really boomed, however. At that point, air conditioning became available and St. Petersburg became a retirement and vacation destination for Midwesterners. The city has remained largely the same, with visitors and retirees arriving from all over during the winter.
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