Gulfport has been called four different things. James and Rebecca Barnett settled here in 1868 and named it Barnett’s Bluff. By 1880 it was Bonifacio. In 1884, Philadelphia financier Hamilton Disston tried to rename it Disston City to match his vision of a busy port town — the U.S. Postal Service rejected the name because … Read more
Davis Islands didn’t exist until D.P. Davis built it. In the early 1920s, the developer dredged mud from Tampa Bay onto two small natural islands — “Little Grassy Key” and “Big Grassy Key” — and manufactured a neighborhood out of bay bottom. He bought the dredged land for $350,000 and sold 306 original lots for … Read more
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 … Read more
Hernando de Soto named the springs here in 1539. Espiritu Santo — “Springs of the Holy Spirit” — is what the Spanish called the natural mineral spring at the north end of Tampa Bay, and the name outlasted the expedition by nearly 500 years. It’s still what the water is called today, on a spa … Read more
Dunedin passed its first law in 1899 to deal with pigs. The town had just incorporated, and the actual reason it bothered was to get the legal authority to ban hogs from roaming the streets — a problem serious enough that it’s the reason city government here exists at all. The Scottish name wasn’t an … Read more
Monster Jam’s three-day Freestyle Mania, Mötley Crüe at the fairgrounds, a free car show at Armature Works, and Dolphin Yoga in Clearwater.
Update: This roundup covered the weekend of August 1–2, 2026 and has passed. Photo: Mark Szelistowski, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons Freestyle legends at the Yuengling Center, Dude Perfect’s live trick-shot tour, a free Jerry Garcia tribute, a 20-plus-year-old Saturday market, and a just-opened Banksy exhibit — five real things worth building a … Read more
Photo: John O’Neill, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons St. Petersburg’s Saturday Morning Market has been running since seven founders started it in November 2002, and it’s still going strong more than two decades later — just in a different spot for the summer. From June through August the market relocates to Williams Park … Read more
175+ vendors, a summer stop from Santa, and a free tote bag for the first 250 guests each day — all in the middle of a Tampa July.
Coachman Park in downtown Clearwater becomes a three-day Asian night market this August, when Mega Night Market brings its Asian Summer Food & Music Festival on the Water to the waterfront August 21-23. It’s free to attend, with free parking available — a rarity for an event of this scale. Mega Night Market has built … Read more