What’s with the first airline? On New Year’s Day in 1914, a crowd of three thousand packed the St. Petersburg waterfront to watch something the world had never seen. The first ticket on a scheduled airline was auctioned off on the sand and won for four hundred dollars by a former mayor, A. C. Pheil. He climbed into a small open Benoist flying boat beside a young pilot named Tony Jannus, and twenty-three minutes later he stepped out in Tampa — the first paying passenger on the first scheduled commercial airline in the world. The whole age of air travel began here, a few feet above the bay, in the Sunshine City.
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.
