"One fact speaks decidedly; within the past five years there has been but one Grand Jury case in this western section of Hillsborough County. Within five years more the young orange groves, which have been planted with other fruits that will be in bearing, will make the residents of this section independently rich. Our lands are good, and can be made rich. Our climate is almost unequalled. Our population is industrious and moral. These will insure prosperity. With the finest cotton, sugar cane, tropical fruits and rice, we have only to persevere for a few years and become independent."

Tourism Gets a Start

Tourism was in its primary stages in Florida when M.C. Dwight arrived and built Clearwater’s first hotel, the Orange View, in 1880. It was located on the current site of the Peace Memorial Presbyterian Church.

With the construction of this hotel, tourists began to trickle into the community. Then, in 1885, a Baltimore physician, Dr. Van Bibber, reported in a medical journal that Clearwater was “the healthiest spot on earth.” This further helped tourism and a second hotel was built. A famous sculptor from Russia, Theodore Kamensky, built the Sea View Hotel on the bluff in what is presently downtown Clearwater.

A historic development for the area was the coming of the railroad.

Peter A. Demens, an enterprising Russian immigrant, was the major figure in getting the railroad brought to Clearwater and the Pinellas peninsula. Demens was determined to get the railroad through Clearwater and to its St. Petersburg terminus. The railroad got as far as Tarpon Springs, north of Clearwater, when the project ran out of money.

Demens wined and dined two financiers, H.O. Armour of Chicago and A.J. Drexel of Philadelphia, in private railroad cars, whisking them by makeshift, Hollywood-style sets at dusk that had been hastily erected to create the illusion of prosperous communities.