Theodore Roosevelt and fishing guide Russell J. Colio on beach with two manta rays caught in Boca Ciega Bay : St. Petersburg, Fla.

Courtesy, Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library System

About this photograph

Photograph Order Number

PA 258

Negative Number

16958

Date

1898

Creator

Burgert Brothers

Publisher

Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library

Date of Photographic Print

1976 printing

Source (original item)

1 photograph : b&w ; 21 x 26 cm. +1 negative (21 x 26 cm.)

Format

JPEG2000

General Notes

(Copied January 6, 1926).; Image measures 16 x 25 cm., and is captioned: The two devilfish.; Alternative location identification and dating: Punta Gorda, Florida; April of 1917.; The following articles support the above identification: Harpooning the Devilfish, Scribner's Magazine, September of 1917.; Roosevelt Arrives Home, The New York Times, April 4th, 1917, page 14.

Subjects

Tampa in the 1890s

Tampa grew up fast in the 1890s. What had been a sleepy fishing village of fewer than 1,000 people turned into a railroad, cigar, and resort town almost overnight. Henry Plant's railway arrived in 1884, and Cuban cigar maker Vicente Martinez-Ybor struck a deal with the Tampa Board of Trade in 1885, opening his first brick factory in 1886 along with housing for his workers. Tampa annexed Ybor City in 1887, and by 1890 some 6,000 people called it home. Plant's jaw-dropping Moorish Tampa Bay Hotel went up between 1888 and 1891. Then in 1898, Tampa became the Army's jumping-off point for Cuba — tens of thousands of soldiers poured through town, including Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders, with the officers bunked at the Tampa Bay Hotel. The 1890s photographs in this collection catch a frontier town in the middle of becoming a city — look for the cigar factories, the rail lines, and that wild hotel on the river.

Sources: Ybor City Historic District Tampa FL (U.S. National Park Service); Tampa Bay Hotel (U.S. National Park Service); The Spanish American War & Florida - Tampa (University of Florida Libraries)