Copy of soldiers and tents of Army camp at Tampa Heights, near Ross and Central Avenues : Tampa, Fla.
Photograph Order Number PA 281A
Courtesy, Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library System
About this photograph
- Photograph Order Number
- PA 281A
- Negative Number
- R149; S123; V1402
- Date
- Creator
- Burgert Brothers
- Publisher
- Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library
- Date of Photographic Print
- 1926 and 1976
- Source (original item)
- 1 photograph : b&w ; 21 x 26 cm. +1 negative (21 x 26 cm.)
- Format
- JPEG2000
- General Notes
- Taken 1898 (copied December 7, 1926). Text on back of print "West of Fla. Ave. North of Mich. South of Buffalo. 1898. Camp Rodgers. REL 149." Ledger states: "Garrison Soldier Camp. Kendrick."
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)