47 Fun Facts About Tampa

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

Hillsborough. The army planted the fort at the river's mouth in 1824 to keep watch on the Seminoles, newly confined to a reservation inland; it closed in 1883, and downtown Tampa now covers the site.

The world's first scheduled airline to use airplanes began serving Tampa in 1914, crossing the bay in what?

A flying boat. Pilot Tony Jannus made the crossing in 23 minutes with a single passenger, a former mayor who had bid $400 at auction for the seat.

At the 2020 census Tampa was Florida's third-most-populous city, behind which two?

Jacksonville and Miami. Jacksonville's lead is partly a matter of borders: it merged with most of Duval County in 1968, which made it one of the largest cities by area in the country.

Tampa is nicknamed 'Cigar City' and also 'The Big' what?

Guava. A columnist coined it in the 1970s as a play on the Big Apple, recalling the fruit broker who came hunting guavas in the 1880s and ended up steering Ybor's cigar makers to the town instead.

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

University of Tampa. The 511-room resort closed in 1930, and three years later a new junior college moved into the empty building and grew into the university; its silver minarets are still the campus landmark.

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?

Key West. Ybor had moved there from Havana when Cuba's revolt began in 1868, but labour trouble and poor transport sent him looking again; he gave Tampa all his time after fire destroyed his island factory in 1886.

Ybor City's cigar rollers chipped in from their own wages to hire someone to do what?

Read aloud to them. From a raised platform the lector worked through the day's newspapers and then novels such as Don Quixote; owners blamed the readings for spreading radical ideas and had them removed after a 1931 strike.

Most of Ybor City's cigar-era immigrants came from Cuba and two European countries, including which of these?

Italy. Most were Sicilians, many of whom had first cut sugar cane elsewhere in the South; they arrived with no cigar-making skills, so they started at the bottom of the factories or opened shops and farms instead.

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

Seventh Avenue. Locals call it La Setima, or simply Broadway; by the early 1970s only a handful of businesses were left on it, and its brick cigar-era blocks have since been revived as Tampa's nightlife strip.

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

Spanish. It began in 1903 as a corner saloon and has since swallowed an entire city block, with fifteen dining rooms seating 1,700; the founder's family still runs it five generations on.

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

Genoa salami. When Tampa's city council declared the 'Historic Tampa Cuban' the city's signature sandwich in 2012, Miami's mayor shot back that salami is for pizza.

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

January. For decades the invasion fell on a Monday in February; it moved to a Saturday in 1988 so that people from out of town could join in, and settled on its present date in 2005.

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

A steel barge. Built for the 1954 invasion, it has masts and rigging but no engine or working sails, so tugboats tow it across the bay while hundreds of private boats tag along.

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

The key to the city. Whether or not the mayor plays along, the krewe then leads a victory parade of more than 100 floats down Bayshore Boulevard, past a crowd of around 300,000.

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

New Orleans' Mardi Gras. The link was literal from the start: for the first mock invasion in 1904 the krewe rode into town on horseback wearing costumes rented from New Orleans.

The expansion Buccaneers lost their first 26 games in orange uniforms later nicknamed after which frozen treat?

Creamsicle. The 0-26 start across 1976 and 1977 is still the longest losing streak of the Super Bowl era; the orange was dropped for red and pewter in 1997, then brought back as a throwback.

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

Oakland Raiders. Tampa's coach Jon Gruden had been the Raiders' own head coach until a trade a year earlier, and his new defence returned three interceptions for touchdowns against his old team.

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

At their home stadium. The league still treated Raymond James as a neutral site, so the Buccaneers' touchdown cannons stayed silent during play, and Tom Brady was named MVP at the end of his first Tampa season.

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

A replica pirate ship sits in Buccaneer Cove behind one end zone, 43 tons of steel and concrete whose cannons boom once for every point the Buccaneers score.

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

St. Petersburg. No single Raymond James is behind the name: broker Robert James opened his firm there in 1962 and merged it two years later with Raymond and Associates, so the stadium bears two surnames.

Which team won a then-record sixth Super Bowl at Raymond James Stadium in 2009 on a last-minute toe-tap touchdown catch?

Pittsburgh Steelers. Santonio Holmes kept both feet down in the corner of the end zone with 35 seconds left to beat Arizona 27-23, making Pittsburgh the first team to win six Super Bowls.

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

The Big Sombrero got its name from ESPN's Chris Berman, after a mid-1970s expansion left the rim rising and dipping like a hat brim. It hosted two Super Bowls before it came down in 1999.

Super Bowl XXV at Tampa Stadium ended on a missed Buffalo kick remembered by which two words?

Wide right. Scott Norwood's 47-yard try drifted past the upright in the final seconds, the Giants won 20-19, and Buffalo went on to lose the next three Super Bowls as well.

Who became the first woman to play for a major North American pro league team, in a 1992 Tampa Bay Lightning exhibition?

Manon Rhéaume tended goal for one period of a preseason game against the St. Louis Blues at Expo Hall, allowing two goals. She went on to win Olympic silver with Canada in 1998.

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.

How did Tampa celebrate the Lightning's 2020 Stanley Cup win, starting a local tradition?

A boat parade. Players cruised the downtown river with the Cup as fans lined the Riverwalk, and the Buccaneers copied it months later, when Tom Brady tossed the Lombardi Trophy from one boat to another.

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

Devil Rays. The 'Devil' was dropped after 2007, leaving a name that nods to both the fish and Florida sunshine, and the renamed club went straight from last place to the 2008 World Series.

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

Milton. Its winds shredded most of the dome's fabric roof in October 2024, and the Rays spent all of 2025 outdoors in an 11,000-seat ballpark across the bay in Tampa.

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

New York Yankees. George Steinbrenner, their longtime owner, lived in Tampa; the ballpark opened in 1996 as Legends Field and was renamed for him in March 2008.

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

A brewery. Anheuser-Busch laid out the gardens and a small bird sanctuary beside its new Tampa plant, and what began as a sideshow to the beer grew into a full zoo and coaster park.

Busch Gardens Tampa Bay, part zoo and part coaster park, takes its main theme from which continent?

Africa. Giraffes, zebras and rhinos roam its 65-acre Serengeti Plain, and guests on the safari tour can hand-feed the giraffes from an open truck.

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

Vertical dive coaster. The car hangs riders over the edge of a 200-foot, 90-degree drop before letting go; it was only the third of its kind in the world.

What did Florida turn the remains of the old Sunshine Skyway bridge into?

Fishing piers. A freighter knocked out the old span in a 1980 storm, killing 35; its surviving approaches became a state park billed as the world's longest fishing pier.

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

Cable-stayed. Its cables are painted taxicab yellow, and its supports are ringed by concrete islands called dolphins, built to absorb a stray ship after the 1980 disaster.

MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa houses the headquarters of Special Operations Command and which other US combatant command?

Central Command, set up in 1983 after the Iran hostage crisis to watch the Middle East, shares the base with Special Operations Command. The field honors Army aviator Colonel Leslie MacDill.

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

The Cuban Missile Crisis. The Air Force had planned to shut most of the base by 1962 as its bombers retired; a second scare came in 1991, when a closure commission ordered all flying to end, a ruling later reversed.

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.

Which 21-foot creature has stood in Tampa airport's main terminal since 2022, its head dipped as if feeding underwater?

A flamingo. Artist Matthew Mazzotta's sculpture is officially titled HOME, and a public contest that drew more than 65,000 entries gave the bird its nickname, Phoebe.

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

Tiger King. The series made the Tampa sanctuary famous, but its cats have since moved to a larger refuge in Arkansas, and a developer paid $19.5 million for part of the land to build townhouses.

Tampa Theatre, a 1926 movie palace, was designed so that audiences feel they are sitting where?

In a moonlit courtyard. Architect John Eberson ringed the auditorium with tiled rooftops and statues under a ceiling of twinkling stars; slated for demolition in 1973, it was saved when citizens rallied.

What are the official colours of the USF Bulls?

Green and gold. USF's teams began as the Golden Brahmans: students reasoned in 1962 that a cattle state like Florida needed an answer to the Texas Longhorns, and the name was later trimmed to the Bulls.

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

About 12 feet. The shallow, sunlit bottom lets seagrass beds thrive, and big ships reach port only through channels dredged more than three times as deep.

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

Fares were abolished. A $2.7 million state grant made the ride free, down from $5 a round trip, and paid for more frequent cars on the line linking downtown and Ybor City.

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

He was lost at sea. Deep in debt after Florida's land boom collapsed, Davis had just sold his Tampa islands when he died in mysterious circumstances aboard a luxury liner bound for Europe.

Which future wrestling superstar grew up in Tampa and played bass guitar in Florida bar bands before turning to the ring?

Hulk Hogan. Born Terry Bollea in Augusta, Georgia, he moved to Tampa as a young child, pitched well enough to draw baseball scouts, and played bass in the band Ruckus before wrestling.

Until Galveston took the title in 2025, Guinness listed Tampa's Bayshore Boulevard as the world's longest what?

Continuous sidewalk. The 4.5-mile walkway follows the seawall from downtown into South Tampa; Guinness now gives the record to the ten-mile walk along Galveston's seawall in Texas.