History of Tampa

ke on October 17 and October 18, 1863. Two Union gunboats shelled the fort and surrounding town and landed troops, who found blockade runners hidden up the Hillsborough River near present-day Lowry Park Zoo and destroyed them. The local militia mustered to intercept the Union troops, but they were able to return to their ships after a short skirmish and headed back out to sea.

The war ended in April 1865 with a Confederate defeat. In May 1865, federal troops of the 2nd U.S. Colored Infantry Regiment arrived in Tampa to occupy the fort and the town as part of Reconstruction. They remained until August 1869.

Reconstruction

The Reconstruction period was hard on Tampa. With little industry, and land transportation links limited to bumpy wagon roads from the east coast of Florida, Tampa was a fishing village with very few people, and poor prospects for development. Throughout its history, Tampa had been affected by yellow fever epidemics borne by mosquitoes from the surrounding swampland, but the sickness was particularly widespread during the late 1860s and 1870s. The disease was little understood at the time, and many residents simply packed up and left rather than face the mysterious and deadly peril.

In 1869, residents voted to abolish the city of Tampa government. The population of "Tampa Town" was below 800 in the official 1870 census count and had fallen further by 1880 (see demographics, below).

Fort Brooke, the seed from which Tampa had germinated, had served its purpose and was decommissioned in 1883. Except for two cannons displayed on the nearby University of Tampa campus, all traces of the fort are gone. A large downtown parking garage near the old fort site is called the Fort Brooke Parking