Known as the "Sunshine City," St. Petersburg gained notoriety as a popular destination for seasonal residents during the Florida real estate boom of the 1920s. However, the history of footprints along with shoreline spans thousands of years. Long before the first contact with Spanish conquistadors during the sixteenth century, indigenous cultures flourished along the abundant estuaries and left shell mounds and pottery as evidence of their settlements. After these original inhabitants disappeared, occasional fishing parties from Cuba and the Caribbean visited a largely uninhabited peninsula along Florida's west coast. Indeed, fewer than 500 people resided along the entire Pinellas peninsula on the eve of the Civil War. Throughout the twentieth century, waves of settlers, tourists, and residents encountered a colorful array of speculators and developers. Sometimes known as a winter wonderland for "snowbird" retirees, St. Petersburg tried to reinvent itself after pundits referred to the city as "God's waiting room" by the early 1960s. Fifty years later, much has changed. This book offers a visual portrait of St. Petersburg since the early 1900s. Historical and contemporary photographs in four chapters illustrate St. Petersburg's waterfront heritage, the transformation of its downtown, the establishment of neighborhoods near downtown, and the city's expansion in more recent years. Rather than offering an academic narrative, St. Petersburg Through Time introduces the reader to important moments in the city's vibrant history and encourages further exploration.

Pinellas County, Florida, has a rich and varied history. From the beautiful waters of the Gulf of Mexico, with the sponge and seafood industry it supported, to wartime training and recruiting, to the world's first commercial airplane flight, Pinellas County has seen many changes through the years.

The books in the Florida and the Caribbean Open Books Series demonstrate the University Press of Florida’s long history of publishing Latin American and Caribbean studies titles that connect in and through Florida, highlighting the connections between the Sunshine State and its neighboring islands. Books in this series show how early explorers found and settled Florida and the Caribbean. They tell the tales of early pioneers, both foreign and domestic. They examine topics critical to the area such as travel, migration, economic opportunity, and tourism. They look at the growth of Florida and the Caribbean and the attendant pressures on the environment, culture, urban development, and the movement of peoples, both forced and voluntary. The Florida and the Caribbean Open Books Series gathers the rich data available in these architectural, archaeological, cultural, and historical works, as well as the travelogues and naturalists’ sketches of the area in prior to the twentieth century, making it accessible for scholars and the general public alike. The Florida and the Caribbean Open Books Series is made possible through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, under the Humanities Open Books program.