The Past and the Present of Shane Lowney’s Tampa
In the 1980’s three major freezes occurred in the central Florida area of Hillsborough County in the United States, causing such significant losses that farmers sold their citrus groves to developers who built subdivisions on them. Another cold snap in 2010 damaged great stretches of tropical foliage and plantings in the city of Tampa, where Shane Lowney has lived and worked all his life. The production of citrus is a source of pride and a central livelihood to the residents of Tampa and Hillsborough County, and Lowney shares Florida’s temperature-watching every winter.
The Tampa which mechanical engineer Shane Lowney knows today has a population over 346,000 souls within a 4-county Greater Tampa Bay area population of over 4 million. These statistics are a far cry from the Tampa Bay discovered by the Spanish in the 16th century. From the moment the Spanish set foot on the shores of Tampa Bay, indigenous populations of Native Americans; the Tocobaga, the Pohoy, and the Calusa, were doomed to extinction through war violence and diseases which the Spanish introduced into the populations. Although the natives sternly ended Spanish attempts to build settlements or to convert them to Catholicism, the infectious diseases they left behind resulted in the depopulation of the Tampa area for more than 200 years. At the time that the American Revolution drove the Seminole Indians into Florida, only Cuban and Native American fishermen were to be found in a small village on Spanishtown Creek on Tampa Bay. The first permanent American settlements in the city limits of Tampa did not emerge until after the United States was ceded Florida by Spain in 1819.
The beautifully tropical and warmly inviting Tampa Bay where Shane Lowney has lived his life is ranked today as the 5th best outdoor city by Forbes in 2008. The 2009 Pew Research Center study ranked Tampa as the fifth most popular American city. Tampa is also a top city for “twenty-somethings” according to a 2004 survey by Washington Square News. Those who live in Tampa are known as Tampans, or for those who take offense at the first moniker, Tampanians. Latin Americans in Tampa are known as tampen~os, or tampen~as. Tampa was incorporated in 1849, as a small huddled village around a United States Army fort which had been built in 1824. Despite Florida’s designation as the 27th state in 1845, growth was lazy until railroad links and the discovery of phosphate, along with a burgeoning cigar industry, saw Tampa grow from 800 residents in 1880 to over 30,000 in the early 1900’s.
Tampa, Florida shut down under martial law during the Civil War in the United States, and despite the arrival of federal troops during Reconstruction in 1865, Tampa remained a fishing village. Shane Lowney can find today only remnants of that Tampa.
The Tampa which mechanical engineer Shane Lowney knows today has a population over 346,000 souls within a 4-county Greater Tampa Bay area population of over 4 million. These statistics are a far cry from the Tampa Bay discovered by the Spanish in the 16th century. From the moment the Spanish set foot on the shores of Tampa Bay, indigenous populations of Native Americans; the Tocobaga, the Pohoy, and the Calusa, were doomed to extinction through war violence and diseases which the Spanish introduced into the populations. Although the natives sternly ended Spanish attempts to build settlements or to convert them to Catholicism, the infectious diseases they left behind resulted in the depopulation of the Tampa area for more than 200 years. At the time that the American Revolution drove the Seminole Indians into Florida, only Cuban and Native American fishermen were to be found in a small village on Spanishtown Creek on Tampa Bay. The first permanent American settlements in the city limits of Tampa did not emerge until after the United States was ceded Florida by Spain in 1819.
The beautifully tropical and warmly inviting Tampa Bay where Shane Lowney has lived his life is ranked today as the 5th best outdoor city by Forbes in 2008. The 2009 Pew Research Center study ranked Tampa as the fifth most popular American city. Tampa is also a top city for “twenty-somethings” according to a 2004 survey by Washington Square News. Those who live in Tampa are known as Tampans, or for those who take offense at the first moniker, Tampanians. Latin Americans in Tampa are known as tampen~os, or tampen~as. Tampa was incorporated in 1849, as a small huddled village around a United States Army fort which had been built in 1824. Despite Florida’s designation as the 27th state in 1845, growth was lazy until railroad links and the discovery of phosphate, along with a burgeoning cigar industry, saw Tampa grow from 800 residents in 1880 to over 30,000 in the early 1900’s.
Tampa, Florida shut down under martial law during the Civil War in the United States, and despite the arrival of federal troops during Reconstruction in 1865, Tampa remained a fishing village. Shane Lowney can find today only remnants of that Tampa.