On New Year’s Day, St. Petersburg celebrated the centennial of the World’s First Airline. Now there is a second centennial to celebrate, the 100th anniversary of Major League Baseball. Major League Spring Training began in St. Pete on February 27, 1914 with the St. Louis Browns (now the Orioles). While the Browns were here only a year, St. Petersburg was host to eight other Major League teams over the next one hundred years. Among these teams was the New York Yankees who held spring training in St. Pete for 30 years beginning in 1925 and ending in 1961, with a few gaps in between.… Read More

What was St. Pete like before the automobile? It was a city of horses and wagons, of course. One of our earliest settlers, David Watt, left an account of traveling from what is now Gulfport to the St. Pete area: “…they jogged along slowly behind the sleepy old horse for mile after mile through the unbroken forest, without seeing a clearing or a house… He notices that the soil was all sand – nothing but sand everywhere. The horse went along over the road silently, his hoofs making no noise, and the wheels rolled silently too in the loose material, except when they bumped over a palmetto or a tree root.… Read More