Plant City has had three names. It started as Ichepuckesassa, after the Native American village on the site. Confusion over the spelling led an Irish postmaster to rename it Cork, after his hometown, in 1860. It became Plant City in 1885 — not for what grows here, but for Henry B. Plant, the railroad magnate whose South Florida Railroad reached the town in 1884 and turned it into a shipping point.
Two railroads, one depot, a 90-degree crossing
The Plant City Union Depot went up in 1908–09 to serve two competing lines at once — the Atlantic Coast Line running east-west and the Seaboard Air Line running north-south, crossing directly through downtown. It’s been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1975. By 1926, farmers were shipping nearly 4 million quarts of strawberries a year out through that same station — the depot didn’t just move people, it moved the crop that made the town’s name.
Winter Strawberry Capital of the World
Plant City’s growing season runs opposite the rest of the country’s — cool Florida winters instead of summer — which is exactly why it became the nickname’s namesake. The Florida Strawberry Festival runs every year in late February or early March, and it’s grown from a local harvest celebration into an event that pulls visitors in from well outside the state, with a concert lineup that punches well above a county fair’s weight.
Good to know
Plant City sits in eastern Hillsborough County, between Tampa and Lakeland. The 2020 census counted 39,764 residents. Downtown’s historic district, centered around the Union Depot, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
For everything else on the calendar, there’s what’s on across Tampa Bay this August.
Photo: Sylvar, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.