50 Fun Facts About Tampa

Fort Brooke, the 1824 army post Tampa grew up around, stood at the mouth of which river?

Colonel George Mercer Brooke arrived with four companies of the 4th Infantry from Pensacola. The fort closed in 1883, just as the railroad arrived.

The earliest written form of the city's name, in the memoirs of a shipwrecked Spaniard, was spelled how?

Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda spent years among Florida's native peoples in the 1500s. One theory links the name to a Calusa word; another to a Creek word meaning 'close to'.

Tampa is the third-most-populous city in Florida, behind which two?

The 2020 census counted 403,364 people in the city proper, but the wider Tampa Bay metro of 3.4 million is Florida's second largest.

Besides 'Cigar City', Tampa's best-known nickname is 'The Big' what?

A local columnist coined it in the 1970s as a play on New York's Big Apple, and the name stuck to a fruit that grows wild around the bay.

Henry B. Plant's 1891 railroad hotel is now the main building of which institution?

Plant's railroad had reached the town only eight years earlier. The hotel cost more than $3 million, had 511 rooms and stretched a quarter of a mile.

How many silver minarets crown the Moorish Revival roofline of the old Tampa Bay Hotel?

They share the skyline with four cupolas and three domes. Babe Ruth signed his first contract in the hotel's Grand Dining Room and hit his longest home run at the field next door.

Which colonel and his Rough Riders were quartered at the Tampa Bay Hotel in 1898 before sailing for Cuba?

Tampa was the army's embarkation port for the invasion, and generals used the hotel as their base of operations.

In 1885 Tampa persuaded cigar maker Vicente Martinez Ybor to move his factories from which city?

Ybor City's first cigars were rolled in 1886, and within about twenty years the depressed village had become a bustling city.

At its 1929 peak, roughly how many cigars a year were rolled in Ybor City?

That output earned Tampa the title 'Cigar Capital of the World'. Workers were read to by a paid lector as they rolled.

Ybor City's immigrant cigar workers came mainly from Cuba, Spain and which other country?

Most of the Italians came from Sicily, and around 60% from a single village, Santo Stefano Quisquina. Their mutual aid societies offered free clinics and libraries.

In 2008 which Ybor City street was named one of the '10 Great Streets in America'?

La Setima is the district's main commercial strip, lined with brick cigar-era buildings; the whole neighbourhood is a National Historic Landmark District.

Ybor City's Columbia Restaurant, Florida's oldest, calls itself the world's largest restaurant for which cuisine?

Fifteen dining rooms seat 1,700 people, flamenco dancers perform most nights, and the Hernandez-Gonzmart family has run it for five generations.

Which meat, absent from the Miami version, is traditionally layered into a Tampa Cuban sandwich?

The addition is credited to Ybor City's Italian immigrants. The rest is ham, roast pork, Swiss cheese, pickles and mustard on Cuban bread, pressed flat.

In which year did Tampa's City Council name the Cuban Sandwich the city's signature sandwich?

The sandwich most likely emerged before 1900 in cafes serving cigar workers in Tampa or Key West, and the Tampa-Miami argument over salami has never been settled.

Since 2005 the Gasparilla Pirate Festival parade has been held on the last Saturday of which month?

The first parade was actually held in May 1904, staged by a group of businessmen who dubbed themselves Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla.

The Jose Gasparilla II pirate ship that 'invades' Tampa each year is actually what kind of vessel?

It is towed into the harbour by a flotilla of hundreds of private boats while the krewe fires cannons at the city.

When the pirates land during Gasparilla, what do they demand from Tampa's mayor?

The mayor always surrenders it, and the krewe then leads a parade of floats down Bayshore Boulevard for a crowd of around 300,000.

Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla modelled itself on the krewes of which other city's celebration?

Jose Gaspar himself is pure Florida folklore: no contemporary record of the pirate exists.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers began play in 1976 and lost how many consecutive games before their first win?

They went 0-14 in year one and did not win until the 13th week of their second season, all in creamsicle orange.

The Buccaneers won their first Super Bowl, XXXVII, by routing which team 48-21?

Coach Jon Gruden had been the Raiders' head coach the season before, and the Bucs picked off five passes against the league's top offense.

By winning Super Bowl LV in 2021, the Buccaneers became the first NFL team to win one where?

Tom Brady, in his first season in Tampa, took the game's MVP award, and the pirate ship's cannons fired for real.

What 103-foot structure at Raymond James Stadium fires cannons when the Buccaneers score?

The steel-and-concrete ship weighs 43 tons. The stadium opened in 1998 and is also home to the USF Bulls.

Raymond James Financial, holder of the Buccaneers' stadium naming rights, is headquartered in which city?

Locals shorten the name to 'Ray Jay'. Capacity is 69,218 for most events and about 75,000 for the biggest ones.

Before Super Bowl LV, Raymond James Stadium had already hosted which two Super Bowls?

That is the Ravens-Giants game of 2001 and the Steelers-Cardinals thriller of 2009. The stadium also staged the 2017 College Football Playoff final.

What was the nickname of Tampa Stadium, the Buccaneers' original home, demolished in 1999?

It opened in 1967, hosted Super Bowls XVIII and XXV, and was briefly renamed Houlihan's Stadium in its final years.

Super Bowl XXV at Tampa Stadium in 1991 ended with the Giants beating the Bills by what score?

Scott Norwood's last-second field goal sailed wide right, the first of Buffalo's four straight Super Bowl defeats.

Which goaltender became the first woman in a major North American pro league with Tampa Bay in 1992?

The Lightning played their first regular-season game that October at Expo Hall on the state fairgrounds, beating Chicago 7-3.

Which Hall of Fame centre fronted the ownership group that won Tampa an NHL expansion franchise in 1990?

The Lightning began play in 1992-93 and lifted their first Stanley Cup in 2004.

After their 2004 title, the Lightning won back-to-back Stanley Cups in which two years?

They reached three straight Finals from 2020 to 2022, with Nikita Kucherov and captain Steven Stamkos leading the way.

Under what name did Tampa Bay's Major League Baseball team begin play in 1998?

The 'Devil' was dropped after 2007, and the shortened name now nods to both the fish and Florida's sunshine. The team reached the World Series in 2008 and 2020, losing both.

Which 2024 hurricane tore the roof off Tropicana Field and forced the Rays out of their home?

The Rays spent 2025 across the bay at George M. Steinbrenner Field, the Yankees' spring-training park in Tampa.

George M. Steinbrenner Field, the Rays' 2025 home, is the spring-training home of which team?

Steinbrenner, the Yankees' longtime owner, lived in Tampa; the ballpark opened in 1996 as Legends Field.

The attraction now called Busch Gardens Tampa Bay opened in 1959 as a free-admission garden next to what?

Anheuser-Busch built it as a hospitality garden for its Tampa brewery; the bird gardens were the original animal exhibit.

Busch Gardens Tampa Bay is landscaped and themed entirely around which continent?

Its Serengeti Plain lets giraffes, zebras and rhinos roam in view of the coasters, and the park draws more than 4 million visitors a year.

SheiKra, which opened at Busch Gardens Tampa in 2005, was the first ride of what type in North America?

It stalls riders over a 200-foot vertical drop before letting go. Montu, from 1996, opened as the world's longest and tallest inverted coaster.

How many people died when the freighter Summit Venture hit the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in May 1980?

Several cars and a Greyhound bus fell 150 feet. The replacement, opened in 1987, was named for former governor Bob Graham in 2005.

The Sunshine Skyway Bridge that opened in 1987 is what type of bridge at its central span?

It carries Interstate 275 and US 19 for just over four miles across the mouth of the bay, linking Pinellas and Manatee counties.

MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa hosts SOCOM and which other unified combatant command HQ?

The base is named for Colonel Leslie MacDill and was dedicated in April 1941. Its host unit flies KC-135 tankers.

Which 1962 event highlighted MacDill's strategic location and saved the base from its planned closure?

Tampa is barely 300 miles from Havana, and the base has never again been seriously threatened with closure.

When its landside/airside terminal opened in 1971, Tampa International became the first airport to use what?

The shuttles still whisk passengers from the central terminal to the satellite airsides. The airport grew out of Drew Field, a 1928 airfield turned WWII training base.

What is the nickname of the 21-foot flamingo sculpture installed at Tampa's airport in 2022?

The piece, officially titled HOME, was chosen from 734 submissions and shows the bird dipping its head as if the terminal were underwater.

Carole Baskin's Big Cat Rescue became a household name through which 2020 Netflix series?

The cats were moved to Turpentine Creek in Arkansas by late 2023, and the Tampa property sold for $19.5 million the following year.

Which architect famous for 'atmospheric' movie palaces designed the 1926 Tampa Theatre?

Its auditorium mimics a Mediterranean courtyard under an artificial night sky, and a Mighty Wurlitzer still plays before films. Citizens saved it from demolition in 1973.

What are the official colours of the USF Bulls?

Founded in 1956, USF is Florida's fourth-largest university by enrolment and one of the state's three Preeminent research universities.

Tampa Bay is Florida's largest open-water estuary, but how deep is it on average?

Ships reach Port Tampa Bay, the state's largest port, through more than 80 miles of dredged channels dug to 47 feet.

Bern's Steak House in Tampa claims the world's largest private wine collection, with more than how many bottles?

About 100,000 bottles are on site and the rest in a building next door. Bern Laxer opened the restaurant in 1956; the Harry Waugh Dessert Room upstairs followed in 1985.

What change in October 2018 nearly tripled ridership on Tampa's TECO Line streetcar?

A state transportation grant covers the fares. The 2.7-mile line of replica Birney cars has linked downtown and Ybor City since 2002.

What became of Davis Islands builder D. P. Davis in October 1926?

He disappeared from an ocean liner mid-Atlantic. His islands now hold Tampa General Hospital and Peter O. Knight Airport.

Hulk Hogan grew up in Port Tampa and attended Robinson High School, but he was born in which city?

Terry Bollea's family moved to Tampa when he was 18 months old, and he spent a decade playing fretless bass in local rock bands before wrestling.

Bayshore Boulevard in Tampa is famous for having the world's longest what?

The six-mile walkway borders Hillsborough Bay from downtown to South Tampa and was laid out in the 1920s boom.