Clearwater’s lore runs to pirate gold — myths of treasure buried in the Gulf sands — and to the ghost hotels of the land boom, grand lobbies that opened to brass bands in 1925 and stood empty by 1930. Old-timers remember the clambakes, beach parades, and drive-in theaters of the 1950s, and every generation has its rebuilding story — a coast that takes the storm, sweeps the sand off Gulf Boulevard, and puts the beach chairs back out by the weekend.
The modern town arrived by rail and resort: Peter Demens’ Orange Belt Railroad reached the bluff in 1888, Clearwater incorporated in 1891 with James E. Crane as first mayor, and in 1897 Henry B. Plant opened the Belleview Biltmore — the vast wood-frame Victorian resort they called the White Queen of the Gulf, which stood until 2015. On May 27, 1915, Clearwater reincorporated as a city and became the seat of brand-new Pinellas County, and within a year the first bridge reached across the harbor to the barrier island.
Why People Visit Clearwater Florida
Clearwater offers three miles of white-sand barrier-island beach repeatedly ranked among America's top beaches, one of the sunniest coasts in the country, the 1947 origin point of the Optimist Pram class sailboat that taught most of the world's Olympic sailors how to sail, and one of the longest spring-training affiliations in Major League Baseball running since the same year. The freshwater springs that gave the place its name still feed the harbor; the Tocobaga lived here for centuries before contact; the Pinellas Peninsula is one of the densest concentrations of small Gulf coast communities in Florida. Visitors come for the beach, the pier, the springs, the boat heritage, the spring training, the sunsets, the snowbird-season rhythm, and the simple Gulf Coast pleasure of three miles of sand under the brightest sky in the country. On the Gulf since 1915.
