Yellow Fever in Early Tampa

Tampa experienced the worst of the yellow fever epidemic.

Death is not always gentle or timely. As you visit Oaklawn Cemetery, Tampa’s c.1850 public burying ground at Morgan and Harrison Streets, it is a jarring fact that many of the early Tampans interred in that peaceful spot died in violent and painful conditions, and many at a young age. Most of Tampa’s founding families lost members in that fashion.

They were victims of yellow fever, a grim epidemic that struck Tampa repeatedly in the city’s early history–five times, in fact, from the city’s charter in 1850 to 1905 when the last case was reported. To a doctor or nurse at the time of the final incidence, the causative agent of yellow fever was well-known. However, in Tampa’s pioneer decades–the 1820s to the late 1890s–the disease was still a frightening mystery, a cruel and unwelcome visitor that came and went without warning.

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