Port Tampa City — Tampa, Florida

Port Tampa City was a railroad and steamship town built by Henry B. Plant at the far end of the Interbay Peninsula, and for 68 years it was a separate municipality from Tampa. The City of Tampa describes the neighborhood today as directly north of MacDill Air Force Base, sharing its western border with Tampa Bay. On May 11, 1961, the City of Tampa annexed the area, and Port Tampa City ceased to exist as a town.

The community history kept by American Legion Post 138 places Port Tampa City at the southwestern tip of the Interbay Peninsula, ground that was called Black Point in the 1800s. The University of Florida Libraries, in its notes on the 1892 Ingraham Everglades expedition, puts Port Tampa about nine miles south of the city of Tampa. The UF notes describe Port Tampa as developed in large part by Plant as a transportation hub for the Plant System's railway and steamboat lines.

Residents still use the old name. The Legion history, written in 2014, says the community Post 138 serves is still considered Port Tampa City, and the City of Tampa lists a neighborhood group under the name Port Tampa City, Inc. Civic Association.

The Henry B. Plant Museum chronology sets out the sequence. In 1885 Plant established a steamship line running between Port Tampa, Key West and Havana. In 1887 he began to develop Port Tampa as a deepwater port. In 1888 the Plant System completed a nine-mile railroad spur connecting Tampa to Port Tampa, and the Inn at Port Tampa opened that same year as Plant's first hotel, three years before his Tampa Bay Hotel opened as a winter resort in 1891.

The founding year therefore depends on the source. The Legion history says settlement began around 1885, when Plant selected the site for his system of hotels, railways and shipping lines, while the City of Tampa neighborhood page gives 1887 as the year Port Tampa City was established at the end of the Henry Plant Railroad line. Both accounts agree that the Port Tampa town grew out of the terminal rather than the other way around.

According to the UF Ingraham Expedition notes, Plant had the channel deepened, extended the docks and built up the port's infrastructure. In the early 1890s his South Florida Railroad ran twice daily train service connecting Port Tampa with the rest of the country by way of Sanford and Jacksonville, and steamships left weekly for Key West, Havana, Mobile and New Orleans. Members of the 1892 expedition rode the train from the Sanford area to Port Tampa, then took the Plant System steamship Tarpon south to Fort Myers.

Trains did not stop at a station in the usual sense. The City of Tampa says the train would stop on the dock where Plant had built two hotels, the St. Elmo and the Port Tampa Inn, and that both are now gone. The Legion history records the detail most often repeated about the Inn: it was built on stilts over Tampa Bay, so guests could fish from their rooms and have the kitchen cook the catch.

The Legion history traces the town's growth to port expansion. Quarters went up for port workers, sea captains built stately residences, merchants built larger homes, and cigar factory workers built modest dwellings in the growing Port Tampa town. The UF notes add that by the late 1880s Tampa had become a commercial city exporting cigars and phosphate among other goods.

Self-government came by act of the state. Per the Legion history, the Florida Legislature granted Port Tampa City a charter on June 30, 1893, creating a self-governed borough with elected officials, ordinances and a marshal. That charter made Port Tampa City a municipality in its own right inside Hillsborough County, distinct from the City of Tampa nine miles up the peninsula.

The Plant era at the dock ended early in the 20th century. The Plant Museum chronology records that Henry Plant died on June 23, 1899, that most Plant System railroads were sold to the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company in 1902, and that the Atlantic Coast Line acquired the Inn at Port Tampa the same year. A hurricane destroyed the Inn in 1921, according to the same chronology. The Legion history states that Port Tampa became less important once several dredging projects made the Port of Tampa accessible to all shipping.

For a few weeks in 1898 the Port Tampa docks were the center of a national mobilization. The Florida Department of State marker Tampa as Port of Embarkation for Spanish American War states that from April to June 1898 Tampa served as the port of embarkation for U.S. troops bound for Cuba, that some 30,000 troops arrived in Tampa, and that 16,000 embarked from Port Tampa on June 7. Command stayed at the Tampa Bay Hotel, while the ships loaded at Plant's piers.

The Legion history says Plant lobbied the War Department to select Tampa as an assembly point and his Port Tampa docks as the point of departure, and that troops camped in the port district and on Picnic Island. FOX 13 reported on November 6, 2017, that the Rough Riders disembarked for Cuba from what is now Picnic Island. The Legion account lists Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders, the Buffalo Soldiers, Clara Barton of the American Red Cross, and the writers Richard Harding Davis and Stephen Crane among those who passed through Port Tampa.

The University of South Florida keeps visual evidence of the moment. Its Exploring Florida collection includes a black and white photo of troops embarking from Port Tampa for Santiago in 1898, credited to the USF Special Collections Department.

The town kept its charter for nearly seven decades. The City of Tampa states that on May 11, 1961, it annexed the area and Port Tampa City ceased to exist as a town. The Legion history describes the same change in sharper terms, saying the chartered municipality lost its sovereignty abruptly on May 11, 1961, when it was annexed by the City of Tampa.

The year 1961 also put the 1898 story on the roadside. The state marker on the embarkation was erected in 1961, according to the Florida Department of State listing, at the corner of West Shore Boulevard and Interbay Boulevard, on the Interbay Peninsula south of downtown Tampa.

Annexation did not end the working port. The Legion history (2014) reports that ships hauling bulk products and petroleum still dock at Port Tampa, that a freight train runs between Port Tampa and Tampa several times a week, and that the port is the main entry point for fuel for both Tampa International Airport and MacDill Air Force Base.

Picnic Island Park, run by City of Tampa Parks and Recreation, is the neighborhood's public shoreline on Tampa Bay. The city lists a beach, a separate gated dog beach just south of the fishing pier, a sandy playground, picnic shelters, a disc golf course and a sand volleyball court. Its extra wide concrete boat ramp is open 24 hours, with 13 spaces for vehicles with trailers and 30 vehicle only spaces, and a mangrove tunnel canoe and kayak launch sits across the street (page updated January 21, 2025).

Several Port Tampa City buildings and sites carry earlier uses. The Legion history notes that the Port Tampa City Library occupies the former First Bank of Port Tampa City building, that American Legion Post 138 stands on the location of the old Municipal Pier, and that West Shore Elementary School occupies the site of the earlier Lottery Building.

The 1898 memory is also kept in a city park. FOX 13 reported in November 2017 that the Tampa Rough Riders, a civic group, were rededicating the gazebo at the Spanish-American War Memorial Park, and the Henry B. Plant Museum in the former Tampa Bay Hotel maintains the chronology that dates the Port Tampa terminal, its rail spur and its inn.