Radical Press

In 1886, Tampa was a city in transition. A small outpost on the west coast of Florida, Tampa was a community of less than 800 residents in 1880. The arrival of Henry Plant’s South Florida Railway and the establishment of the cigar industry transformed Tampa into an ethnically diverse urban center in the New South. By 1900, over 5,000 people called Tampa home.

Vicente Martinez Ybor, Ignacio Haya and other leaders of the cigar manufacturing industry relocated to Tampa on 40 acres of wooded swampland just north-east of downtown hoping to establish a company town, a controlled environment in which cigar rollers would live and work. Ybor’s Land Improvement Company constructed low-cost houses for factory workers and promoted the area to other cigar manufacturers. In 1900, the port of Tampa received over 1,180 tons of tobacco, collecting 1 million dollars in tax receipts, making it the 10th busiest port in the nation. Cigar production reached its zenith in 1919 with the production of 410 million cigars and Tampa enjoyed the title “cigar capitol of the world.”

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