Published Aug. 28|Updated Aug. 28
From the quirky to the quixotic, St. Petersburg has a colorful history dotted with eccentric mayors, racial strife, environmental calamities and loads of wacky publicity stunts.
Do you know, for instance, what happened to the only passenger on the first train to arrive in what is now the city of St. Petersburg in 1888? How about why local police raided City Hall in 1921? Or which sitting president was the first to visit the Sunshine City?
While researching St. Petersburg history as part of the Editorial Board’s coverage of the Historic Gas Plant and Tampa Bay Rays stadium deal, I took a lot of notes. Rather than waste those notes, why not turn them into a fun quiz about St. Pete history? Special thanks to local authors Jon Wilson, Rick Baker, Raymond Arsenault and Will Michaels, whose history books provided the spark for many of the questions.
How many questions can you get right?
At the start of the Civil War, how many families lived on the southern end of the Pinellas peninsula?
a. None
b. Two, but they still feuded about where to draw the property lines.
c. Five
d. 12
Answer: c.
During the Civil War, which occupations in St. Petersburg were exempt from Confederate conscription?
a. Local mayors
b. Clergy
c. Salt workers
d. Cattle ranchers
e. Orange farmers
Answer: b. and c. Clergy for religious reasons. Why salt workers? Salt was an important commodity for preserving food during the Civil War. It was so important that the Union Army destroyed — or tried to —several salt evaporation operations in the Tampa Bay area.
In 1868, how much did Rosa Read pay to buy 96 acres near Clam Bayou on Boca Ciega Bay?
a. Three dozen mullet, a mule and four homemade mosquito swatters.
b. $48
c. Six pounds of hard candy.
d. A year’s worth of haircuts.
Answer: b.
How much did Abel Miranda pay for the Rosa Read property the following year?
a. 10 crates of oranges and a copy of the novel “The Last Chronicle of Barset” by Anthony Trollope.
b. $500
c. Three horses, one of which died a day later from equine piroplasmosis.
d. Two year’s worth of haircuts.
Answer: b.
In 1876, how did mail get to the local post office?
a. By shallow draft schooner from Cedar Key.
b. By “the walkers,” who carried the mail from Tampa, each covering about 10 miles of the weekly route.
c. Carrier pigeon
d. Trick question. There was no local post office.
Answer: a.
City leader Peter Demens’ train line arrived in St. Petersburg in 1888. What was it called?
a. The Pinellas Peach
b. The Apple Line
c. The Palm Express
d. The Orange Belt
e. Amtrak
Answer: d.
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Explore all your optionsThe first train ever to arrive in St. Petersburg carried only one passenger. What happened to him?
a. He was attacked by a swarm of mosquitos and contracted yellow fever. Despite the early setback, he settled in the Mirror Lake era, where he stayed for the next 40 years until his death.
b. He was elected mayor two months later.
c. A shoe salesman, he took one look at the ramshackle community and got the next day’s train out of town.
d. He made a fortune by growing pineapples around what is now Lake Maggiore. The good times ended in financial disaster after a hard freeze in the winter of 1905.
Answer: c.
There were no bridges across Tampa Bay when the Tampa and Gulf Coast line linked Tampa to St. Petersburg, so it had to snake around the top of the bay. How long did the 64-mile train trip take?
a. 2 hours
b. 4 hours
c. 8 hours
d. 12 hours
e. It never actually made it to St. Petersburg
Answer: d. The line was nicknamed the “Tug and Grunt” and carried 1,500 people to St. Pete on its first run in 1914.
In the early 1900s, Edwin H. Tomlinson dug an artesian well near Third Avenue South and Waterfront Park dubbed the “Fountain of Youth” for its alleged restorative powers. People drank the water and used it for bathing. In 1971, what was found in the water in higher than usual quantities?
a. Lead
b. Xanax
c. E. coli bacteria
d. Lithium
e. Vitamin C, and a little bit of vitamin B
Answer: d. The alkali metal is used in medicine to treat bipolar disorder and some other mental illnesses.
In June 1909, what dried up in St. Petersburg?
a. The oil that for decades bubbled up near what is now Tropicana Field.
b. Salt Lake, now Lake Maggiore, sending alligators, turtles and other wildlife scrambling for new homes.
c. All of the city’s reserve funds, spent on a scheme to include a team of dancing elephants among the city’s tourist draws.
d. Sponges. The city’s botched effort to wrest away the “Sponge Capital of the World” title from Tarpon Springs imploded when a particularly low tide in Tampa Bay uncovered all of the “planted” sponges, killing all of them.
Answer: b.
On Feb. 16, 1912, how did W.L. Bonney raise $186.75?
a. He told tourists he was William H. Bonney, also known as notorious gun fighter Billy the Kid.
b. The pilot charged people to watch him fly a Wright biplane along the city’s waterfront.
c. An archer, he fired arrows into apples held up by a steady-handed spider monkey.
d. He told the manager at the First Bank of St. Petersburg that he was the new mayor and needed the money for the city’s newest road project. He wasn’t the mayor, but he got the money.
Answer: b
Why did police raid St. Petersburg City Hall in November 1921?
a. The building was overrun by three wild hogs. The cops were called to shoo them back outside.
b. To seize the mayoral election ballots that the mayor refused to turn over.
c. They were tipped off that notorious bank robber Byron Camp was working as a mail clerk in the building. It turned out to be a different Byron Camp.
d. The mayor was throwing an illegal Prohibition era booze party.
Answer: d. Mayor Noel Mitchell was later removed in a recall vote.
Also in November 1921, Virginia Burnside became the first woman elected to …
a. St. Petersburg City Council.
b. the nation’s first mosquito control board.
c. judge the city’s famous annual bathing suit contest.
d. the city’s “wild hog capture and eradication” committee.
Answer: a
In 1922, what was added to Mayor Frank Pulver’s duties?
a. Dog catcher
b. City bathing suit inspector
c. He was paid an extra dollar a week to clean the city’s first public bathroom, which happened to be at City Hall.
d. He was allowed to give out 25-cent citations to anyone who spat bubble gum onto the city’s walkways.
Answer: b. Not kidding. He judged the bathing suit contest in an effort to promote the city.
In 1924, what was the combined membership of the city’s five shuffleboard clubs?
a. 200
b. 500
c. 1,000
d. More than 10,000
Answer: d. That’s a lot of people firing snuggles, hooks and hammers.
The Coliseum opened in November 1924. Which one of these five things did not happen at the dance hall and performance venue, which is still open today?
a. A woman often stood outside with religious pamphlets to warn patrons that they were about to enter a den of sin.
b. The venue once hosted a horned toad race.
c. Famous wrestler Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka grappled a bear in a caged ring.
d. Louis Armstrong canceled a gig at the venue because “it was all for whites.”
e. The Boston Celtics played a game there, as did tennis stars Poncho Segura, Jack Kramer and Bobby Riggs.
Answer: c. While Snuka was a real wrestler, he did not fight a bear at the Coliseum.
What is one common answer to how the Manhattan Casino in “The Deuces” neighborhood got its name when it opened in 1925?
a. The original developer was from New York City.
b. At the time, St. Petersburg was a segregated city. Some African Americans idealized New York City as being free of legal segregation, and thus the venue was named after that ideal place.
c. The venue had no name when it opened. The first customer ordered the eponymous drink — whiskey, sweet vermouth and bitters — and the rest is history.
d. The first general manager preferred the tomato-based clam chowder named after Manhattan, over the creamier New England variety.
Answer: b.
On Nov. 22, 1925, 90 of the 134 pages in the Sunday St. Petersburg Times were filled with what?
a. News of Babe Ruth’s visit after recently winning a World Series with the New York Yankees.
b. A list of everyone in the city who had fallen behind on their property taxes.
c. Real estate advertising; most of the ads were for empty lots.
d. Photos and stories about how the city had seemingly landed a Major League Baseball franchise, only to have hopes dashed a few days later when the franchise instead went to Philadelphia.
Answer: c.
What was city leader Walter P. Fuller referring to in 1926 when he said, “We just ran out of suckers.”
a. People to buy all of the real estate for sale. The city’s, and much of the state’s, real estate markets collapsed that year.
b. The candy suckers promised to anyone who attended a rally to protest Major League Baseball choosing Philadelphia over St. Petersburg.
c. He was referring to the failed attempt by city residents to set a Guinness World Record for consuming the most RC Cola through a straw in an hour.
Answer: a. The city’s total assessed property value eventually slides from almost $162 million to a low of $67 million in 1936 and does not fully recover until 1950.
How did the city’s Million Dollar Pier — completed in 1926 — get its name?
a. A couple years earlier, St. Petersburg City Manager Claude Dynamo said the design looked like “a million bucks” and the name stuck.
b. It cost $998,729.18.
c. The pier actually cost $213,452, but city leaders thought a million-dollar price tag would garner more publicity.
d. It actually cost $1.83 million, but city leaders hated the idea of publicizing the massive cost overruns.
Answer: b. That’s about $37 million in today’s dollars.
What were the Sunshine Babies?
a. A Negro League baseball team based in St. Petersburg.
b. The girls featured in ads that ran all over the United States promoting the city’s tourist attractions.
c. After the city’s streak of 546 days of at least some sunshine ended in 1936, city publicist John Lodwick featured several toddlers in an ad campaign that boasted the kids “never have known a cloudy day” for the first 18 months of their lives.
d. The young women who were often admonished for wearing revealing swimsuits on the city’s beaches.
Answer: a and c.
What stood out about St. Petersburg Federal Savings & Loans, opened in 1936?
a. It was founded by three sisters and run nearly entirely by women.
b. It handed out chocolate chip cookies to anyone who deposited more than $500.
c. It was the first air-conditioned building in the city.
d. A visor-wearing chimp was trained to take depositors’ money and put it in the cash drawer.
Answer: a. By the early 1960s, it was the second largest of five S&Ls in the city. (The city’s first air conditioned building was the 2,300-seat Florida Theater, which opened in 1926.)
Also in 1936, St. Pete reportedly became the third city in the country to install parking meters. How much did an hour cost?
a. 5 cents
b. 10 cents
c. 25 cents
d. Nothing — the meters never worked properly.
Answer: a. (Oklahoma City, the city often credited with employing the first parking meters, also charged 5 cents.)
What was the population of St. Petersburg in 1950?
a. 35,789
b. 67,865
c. 96,738
d. 111,978
Answer: c. The current population is about 262,000.
What were The Harlem, Newkirks, El Rancho and Geech’s?
a. Eating spots in The Deuces around 22nd Street South.
b. Skateboarding moves created by local skater club The Flying Crazies.
c. The name of the first four winning boats in the National Offshore Speed Boat competition held off of St. Petersburg’s pier.
d. Nicknames that Mayor Al Lang gave to his four favorite horses.
Answer: a.
What was Charlie Williams best known for in St. Petersburg?
a. Caught the first home run at the New York Yankees first spring training game in St. Pete in 1925.
b. The first driver to kill a pedestrian in St. Petersburg.
c. His collection of four tigers, three orangutans and a pair of black bears that he kept in his backyard in the city’s Bayboro area.
d. Bolita kingpin of St. Petersburg,
Answer: d. He was eventually shot to death, gangland style, in 1953.
Which of these things happened on the day the Sunshine Skyway bridge opened in September 1954?
a. A small powerboat struck one of the bridge’s main pillars, doing little damage but foreshadowing a future tragedy.
b. Someone flew a Piper Cub airplane under the bridge.
c. The mayor was late for the ribbon cutting.
d. A four-car pile up occurred, clogging the bridge for more than two hours.
Answer: b.
Which of these celebrities came to the Sunshine Skyway opening ?
a. Miss Greece, Rika Dialina
b. Dick Clark of American Bandstand
c. “The Duke” himself, John Wayne
d. A 9-year-old Jimmy Buffett
Answer: a.
What did about 100 tourists find at their hotel doors after getting off a cruise ship in Guatemala in November 1955?
a. A box of Florida oranges.
b. Armed guards sent to quickly return them to the ship after a presidential coup.
c. Children singing “Old Folks at Home,” Florida’s state song.
d. Copies of the St. Petersburg Times.
Answer: d. In the city’s long tradition of relentlessly promoting itself as a tourist mecca, public relations ace Jack Bryan arranged fast transport of the papers via South American Airlines.
Which of these things were said or written about St. Petersburg?
a. “I tell young people who want to make money to get out of St. Petersburg as fast as they can.”
b. “We are an organization which will stop at nothing to rid the town of St. Petersburg, Florida, of the elderly people which have tried to inhabit it.”
c. “Lonely and bored old people pass the time listlessly on a St. Petersburg, Florida, sidewalk.”
d. “I believe you’ll agree St. Petersburg has the poorest streets of any in the state and probably the biggest traffic problem of any city its size.”
e. “I don’t want to be the person who integrates St. Petersburg.”
f. All of the above.
Answer: f. Who said it? a. Writer and political gadfly Thomas Dreier. b. The Scarlett Torch Gang, a group that shot out windows with pellet guns and vowed to rid the city of its elderly in the 1950s. c. Life Magazine photo caption from 1959. d. Developer Joe Brow sometime around 1957 or 1958. e. City Manager Ross Windom, who served for 10 years before resigning in 1959.
The soil in the Goose Pond area, which was filled in to create Central Plaza and other developments, was so fertile for growing vegetables that one farmer said:
a. “Even a toad-brained bumble butt could grow potatoes in that bog.”
b. “Seeds love that soil like Florida boys love their mamas.”
c. “You could throw a stone in there and it would grow.”
d. “To a city man, that soil smells foul. To a farmer, it smells like money.”
Answer: c.
What was Goose Pond also known for?
a. Drowning cattle that got sucked down into the muck.
b. Being home to the largest illegal moonshine still in the city.
c. A 13-foot alligator everyone called New Boots.
d. Catching fire during dry spells.
Answer: d.
Around 1955, what did the St. Petersburg Times call “a community health and economic disaster”?
a. An outbreak of yellow fever.
b. The revealing nature of women’s swimsuits on local beaches.
c. A particularly thick invasion of mosquitos.
d. The number of pedestrians killed by drunk drivers.
Answer: c. The invasion of flying insects was so bad that some people sold their relatively new homes and moved back north.
In 1956, who was given what is believed to be the city’s only ticker-tape parade?
a. Elvis Presley
b. Col. Paul Tibbetts, the B-29 pilot who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
c. “Whirley” Shirley Fry, a city resident and Wimbledon tennis champion.
d. Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels, better known as The Lone Ranger and Tonto from the popular 1950s TV show.
Answer: c.
In 1957, city officials asked nationally known architect Victor Gruen to devise a plan to revitalize downtown. What was one of the hallmarks of his plan?
a. Cutting away parts of the waterfront to install canals like the ones in Venice, Italy.
b. Eliminate all auto traffic from downtown by installing a loop road around the district.
c. Thinking he’d been hired by the city in Russia, he suggested heated underground tunnels.
d. Creating a “saints walk,” with public art all over the city glorifying saints from various religions.
Answer: b. City leaders considered his plan too radical.
By 1960, what percentage of St. Petersburg homes had air conditioning?
a. 8%
b. 22%
c. 33%
d. 50%
Answer: b. Hardier folk, for sure.
The Impacs, a successful St. Petersburg band, got to:
a. Open for Elvis Presley at the Florida Theater.
b. Play non-stop for 24 hours in an attempt to set a world record.
c. Tour with Dick Clark, host of American Bandstand.
d. Play a song underwater in scuba gear in an episode of the popular TV show Flipper.
Answer: c.
What was one of the reported reasons the New York Yankees moved its spring training from St. Petersburg to Fort Lauderdale in 1962?
a. Star player Mickey Mantle preferred the view of the Atlantic Ocean to that of the Gulf of Mexico.
b. Fort Lauderdale offered to pay for all the team’s baseball bats.
c. St. Petersburg’s downtown hotels still refused to desegregate, forcing the baseball team to house its Black players at separate hotels.
d. Fort Lauderdale’s mayor was dating the daughter of one of the team’s owners.
Answer: c. The Yankees were immediately replaced in St. Petersburg by the newborn New York Mets, managed by Casey Stengel.
What did Delian Apollon do on Feb. 13, 1970?
a. Became the last person to shoot a bear within city limits.
b. The ship ran aground in Tampa Bay triggering a massive oil spill.
c. Became the first woman to win the city’s annual swimsuit competition wearing a string bikini.
d. The dolphin beached itself at the top of Coffee Pot Bayou after getting tangled in a discarded tire. The good Samaritans that worked to free the dolphins named it Delian Apollon for its Greek god-like struggle to survive.
Answer: b. The oil washed up along St. Pete’s waterfront, from Weedon Island to Pinellas Point.
Who was the first sitting president to visit St. Petersburg?
a. George Washington, on a fishing trip with Thomas Jefferson and John Adams in the winter of 1795.
b. John F. Kennedy, who according to the guest book, stayed at the same area hotel in 1962 that happened to also be hosting an “M. Monroe.”
c. Richard Nixon, who held a massive political rally at the Bayfront Center in 1970.
d. Gerald Ford in 1975. He famously stumbled on the stairs of the local convention center, a gaffe actor Chevy Chase replicated to comedic effect on a new show called “Saturday Night Live.”
Answer: c. If you guessed “a,” maybe try fewer history quizzes and more history books.
After 17 years, what finally was completed in 1987?
a. The repainting of the Sunshine Skyway bridge.
b. Interstate 275 from the Howard Frankland Bridge to the new Sunshine Skyway.
c. The concrete “dolphins” that protect the Sunshine Skyway from ship collisions.
d. The city’s downtown condominium tower committee. The members completed their work and disbanded the committee after concluding “it’s highly unlikely that the downtown core will ever have enough condo towers to justify the existence of this committee.”
Answer: b.
What did a 1988 Tampa Tribune editorial compare to a “particularly pinched Albanian village?”
a. Kenneth City
b. Pinellas Park
c. Treasure Island
d. The city of St. Petersburg (during its ill-fated attempt to lure the Chicago White Sox baseball franchise).
Answer: d. Ouch!
That’s it for the quiz. Enjoy a few more archival photos and images.
