History of Tampa

Seasonal residents and U.S. control

In the mid-18th century, events in American colonies drove the Seminole Indians into the wilds of northern Florida. During this period, the Tampa area had only a handful of residents: Cuban and Native American fishermen. They lived in a small village at the mouth of Spanish town Creek on Tampa Bay, in today’s Hyde Park neighborhood along Bayshore Boulevard.

In 1821, the United States purchased Florida from Spain (see Adams-Onís Treaty), partly to reduce Indian raids, and partly to eliminate a refuge for escaped slaves from neighboring Southern states. One of the first U.S. actions in its new territory was a raid which destroyed Angola, a settlement built by escaped slaves and free blacks on the eastern shore of Tampa Bay.

Frontier days

The Treaty of Moultrie Creek (1823) created a large Indian reservation in the interior of the peninsula of Florida. As part of efforts to establish control over the vast wilderness, the U.S. government built a series of forts and trading posts in the new territory. "Cantonment Brooke" was established on January 10, 1824, by Colonels George Mercer Brooke and James Gadsden at the mouth of the Hillsborough River on Tampa Bay, at the site of the Tampa Convention Center in Downtown Tampa. On January 22, 1824, the post was officially named Fort Brooke.

During its first decades of existence, Tampa was very much an isolated frontier outpost. The sparse civilian population practically abandoned the area when the Second Seminole War flared up in late 1835. After almost seven years of