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Safety Harbor this month celebrates the
90th anniversary of its incorporation as a city. Commemorative
events will be noted throughout the year, but it was May 1917 when
the city completed the paperwork that made it a legal entity. The
anniversary is noteworthy for the very fact the city has survived,
if nothing else. Newcomers to Florida often are unaware of the boom
and bust cycles that have shaped the state and the profound effect
they have had on municipalities such as Safety Harbor. It also is
noteworthy in this state that has experienced such tremendous
growth and change that there is a legitimate and interesting
history to this community. It is most emphatically not the creation
of a developer who converted orange groves or pasture land into a
planned community with well-designed cul de sacs and a central
shopping area. Safety Harbor is a town with an identity that
stretches back into prehistory, of which the past 90 years are only
the latest incarnation.
Begin with the mound at Philippe Park,
named after Pinellas County's first settler, Odet Philippe. He is
honored as the first to cultivate citrus crops in Florida, groves
first planted in what is now the park. The mound was a landmark
built by the Tocobaga Indians and offered deep water anchorage for
Philippe's sailing ship, the Ney. It now is recognized as the
spiritual and ceremonial heart of a native American culture that
today is called "the Safety Harbor culture." It is estimated that
tens of thousands of Tocobagans lived and thrived here before the
first contact with Spanish explorers.
Safety Harbor first began to develop as a
modern community, known informally first as Bailey's Bluff and
then Green Springs, during the late 1800s. Besides Philippe's
efforts, the attraction was the natural springs. They gave the area
a reputation as a center for healing and are believed to be the
source of legends of the Fountain of Eternal Youth, which brought
the Spanish to the area 500 years ago. The springs were well-known
to native Americans, including the Seminoles, who were successors
to the Tocobaga. Commercial development began after the Civil War
and the predecessors to today's Safety Harbor Resort and Spa were
in operation before the city was incorporated.
In 1917 Pinellas County was only five
years old, just separated from Hillsborough County. Transportation
across Tampa Bay primarily was by ferry. One of the ferry stops was
at Safety Harbor, but not at the site of today's Pier. The first
commercial pier was about a half-mile to the north near the mouth
of a small creek that today is the southernmost boundary of
Philippe Park. Downtown was located in what is now a residential
neighborhood. Following World War I, Florida was in the midst of a
tremendous boom. Safety Harbor was growing rapidly and plans were
made for a complex of buildings on the Bay that would not only
house the springs, but would be a center for commerce and industry.
Streets and subdivisions were platted, brick streets with granite
curbs were built and the city's potential for growth rivaled that
of any other city in the county.
Before 1929's stock market crash plunged
the nation into the Great Depression, Florida's land boom
collapsed in the mid-1920s. Construction halted in Safety Harbor,
but not before the completion of a complex of buildings at the east
end of Main Street. One building survives, the former St. James
Hotel, today called the Harbor House. Buildings recently erected by
Olympia Development echo the three-story structures that once
flanked the hotel. Across the street, the spa was evolving. It was
to experience ownership changes, consolidation of other
health-related businesses and worldwide fame for its waters.
In addition to the grinding poverty of the
Depression years, which culminated in the City of Safety Harbor
declaring municipal bankruptcy in 1938, the city suffered the
insult of being cut off the main route into northern Pinellas
County as an entrepeneur named Ben Davis built a causeway, today's
Courtney Campbell Causeway. The small town languished until the
1970s when residential growth returned. Safety Harbor's population
doubled in that decade and doubled again in the next, bringing it
near its current size. It resisted efforts by Clearwater to annex
it, even when sewer and water systems were used as weapons to
control growth.
As the Tampa Bay area has become a single
metropolitan entity, Safety Harbor has survived and thrived at its
very center. It has a beautiful location on Old Tampa Bay,
surrounded by major roadways that provide access to two major
airports and all of the amenities of big cities. Yet, at its heart,
it is still a small town shaded by centuries-old oaks and home of
the healing waters.
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