The 1920s land boom built much of the city you still see today, including the grand Mediterranean-style Vinoy resort that opened on the bayfront in 1925. Baseball came with the sunshine — major-league clubs have held spring training in St. Petersburg for more than a century, and the bayfront ballfields were a fixture of the season. Hurricanes and the Depression slowed the boom, and the city weathered both, but the climate kept bringing people back, and St. Petersburg settled into a long, easy life as a sunny Gulf-coast resort town.
Our St. Petersburg logo carries the Florida alligator over “Florida Territory · Est. 1845,” the year Florida became a state — the shared emblem of every Merlin Classics Florida town. Printed in clean retro black-and-white that reads like an old crate stamp or travel decal, the alligator stands for Florida as a whole; what makes this one St. Petersburg is everything behind it — the sunshine and the bay, the green benches and the murals, and the New Year’s morning the airline age took off from the waterfront.
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.
