St. Petersburg is young as cities go. The Pinellas peninsula between Tampa Bay and the Gulf had been fishing ground for the Tocobaga people long before Europeans came, and a few pioneer families raised citrus along the shore in the mid-1800s. The town itself arrived with the railroad: in 1888 Peter Demens’s Orange Belt Railway reached the end of the peninsula, and a settlement grew up around the terminus. It incorporated as a town in 1892 and as a city in 1903 — a small, sun-struck place almost surrounded by water, looking for a reason to be found.
It found that reason in the weather. St. Petersburg catches sun so reliably that an early paper, the Evening Independent, promised to give its copies away free on any day the sun failed to shine — and rarely had to make good on it. The nickname stuck: the Sunshine City. For half a century downtown was also known for its green benches, thousands of them lining the sidewalks and filling the postcards mailed north by winter visitors. Sunshine, a long bright waterfront, and an unhurried pace pulled tourists and retirees in by the trainload.
Why People Visit St Petersburg
St. Petersburg mixes sunshine, shoreline, and a genuine arts scene in a way few Florida cities can. Visitors come for the waterfront museums and murals, the pier and the bayfront parks, the nearby Gulf beaches, and the easy, bright pace of a city that has earned its Sunshine City name for more than a century. History sits comfortably beside everyday life here, from the spot where the first airline took flight to the gardens and galleries downtown, and the water is never more than a few blocks away.
