Page "Tampa, Florida" Paragraph 2

In 1824, the United States Army established a frontier outpost called Fort Brooke at the mouth of the Hillsborough River, near the site of today's Tampa Convention Center.

The first civilian residents were pioneers who settled near the fort for protection from the nearby Seminole population.

The town grew slowly until the 1880s, when railroad links, the discovery of phosphate, and the arrival of the cigar industry jump-started Tampa's development and helped it to grow into an important city by the early 1900s.