Ask Margaret
You are correct that Pinellas County was once part of
Hillsborough County. In fact, the peninsula we now know as
Pinellas County was not the only one. Today’s counties of Polk,
Manatee, Sarasota, Charlotte, DeSoto, Hardee and Highlands,
as well as most of Glades and portions of Lee, were also part of
the large mass that was originally designated as Hillsborough
County.
Hillsborough became the 19th county in the Territory of
Florida in 1834, just 12 years after the land known as Florida
was organized as a territory of the United States and 11 years
before Florida was admitted as a state. Records show that the
immense new Hillsborough County was populated by only
836 settlers, plus the Native Americans who were already
there and the soldiers who protected it.
In 1835, Hillsborough’s western peninsula (now Pinellas)
gained its first non-native permanent resident, Count Odet
Philippe. He built his home in what is now Safety Harbor
near a former Tocobaga Native American village, which is
today known as Philippe Park. He introduced cigar making
and citrus groves to the region, which encouraged additional
settlers to move to the area.
Fort Harrison was built on the peninsula about that time on
a bluff overlooking Hillsborough’s western coastline in what
is now Clearwater’s Harbor Oaks area. It provided Tampa’s
soldiers from Fort Brooke a place to rest and regroup during
the Second Seminole War.
In 1842, the United States Government encouraged
settlement in Hillsborough’s western peninsula, which
became known as West Hillsborough and is today’s Pinellas,
by offering 160 acres to anyone who was willing to bear arms
and cultivate the land. This brought families, such as the
Booths, the Coachmans and the McMullens to the area to raise
cattle and plant citrus.
Tarpon Springs became West Hillsborough’s first
incorporated city in 1882. Ten years later, St. Petersburg was
founded by Peter Demens, just four years after the Orange Belt
Railway was extended into Hillsborough. The Hillsborough
County Seat was located in Tampa, across the Bay, where
decisions for the entire area were made without much, if any,
input from its outlying areas. This was due in large part to
the lack of adequate transportation that made communication
between the divergent, geographically separated areas almost
nonexistent. The citizens of West Hillsborough came to resent
their lack of participation and input into the policies that
affected their lives, businesses, laws and taxes.
124 TAMPA BAY MAGAZINE
by Margaret Word Burnside
| MAY/JUNE 2016
By the turn of the century, Hillsborough’s western
stepchild had begun to grow and prosper. Farmers and
others from southern states such as South Carolina,
Georgia and Alabama moved there to work in the
burgeoning businesses, tourist resorts and growing
citrus industry. This progress increased the need for
transportation improvements. Despite the growth in St.
Petersburg, Tarpon, Dunedin, Largo and Clearwater and
their outlying areas, West Hillsborough still had no paved
roads.
In 1906, after repeated objections and excuses, the
Hillsborough Commissioners constructed a shell road
between Tampa and Ozona to the northwest. While this
somewhat placated the residents and workers of the
peninsula’s northern sections, it was unaccessible to
the more populated southern parts. The Hillsborough
government later built a bridge from the mid-peninsula
town of Seminole across Long Bayou to the lower, more
southern St. Petersburg area. However, due to its poor
construction, the rickety wooden structure collapsed.
W.L. Straub, the editor of the St. Petersburg Times,
published an editorial on February 23, 1907, detailing the
reasons why the western peninsula should secede from
Hillsborough County. His pivotal article became known as
the “Pinellas Declaration of Independence.” On May 23,
1911, Florida Governor Albert Gilchrist signed a County
Is it true that Pinellas and Hillsborough
Counties were originally one county, which
was known as Hillsborough County? \
S.F., Palm Harbor