Tampa

Tampa is a city on the west coast of Florida, United States, at the head of Tampa Bay. Its Ybor City district, built around cigar factories in the 1880s, gave it the nickname Cigar City.

Fort Brooke was set up at the mouth of the Hillsborough River in 1824, and a village grew beside it. Henry B. Plant brought his railroad to the town in the 1880s, and in 1891 he opened the Tampa Bay Hotel, a brick building with silver minarets that is now Plant Hall of the University of Tampa. Vicente Martinez Ybor moved his cigar business from Key West to the new district, and Cuban, Spanish and Italian immigrants rolled cigars by hand in its factories. José Martí spoke to the cigar workers from the steps of an Ybor factory while raising support for Cuban independence.

Mosaic, a maker of phosphate and potash fertilizers, runs its company from Tampa, and phosphate from the mines of central Florida leaves through Port Tampa Bay. Bloomin' Brands, the owner of Outback Steakhouse, began in Tampa and keeps its head office in the city. The Tampa Cuban sandwich adds salami to the roast pork and ham, on Cuban bread baked in Ybor City.

The Columbia Restaurant, opened in Ybor City in the first decade of the 20th century, is the oldest restaurant in Florida and is still run by the founding family. Each January the Gasparilla Pirate Festival sends a pirate ship into the harbor and a parade of costumed krewes through the streets. Busch Gardens Tampa Bay keeps African animals beside its roller coasters on the north side of the city.