USA > Florida > Florida, 1513-1913, past and future; four hundred years of wars and peace and industrial development > Part 23
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Tampa's water-borne traffic amounted in 1912 to 1,823,000 tons, valued at $30,104,414. This showed a large increase over the ton- nage and values of the previous year, despite the fact that there was Vol. 1-30
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a decrease of about thirty percent in the bulk of phosphate and lumber shipments, due to causes temporary in their nature. Nine hun- dred and thirteen vessels, with a net tonnage of 1,333,925 tons, engaged in foreign and domestic trade, and representing fourteen nationalities in their ownership, cleared the port in 1912. Five million dollars' worth of crude and refined oils came through the port from Mexico and Texas. The oil is used largely as a fuel by manufac- turers who have found it more economical than coal in this city and throughout south Florida.
As an entrance for immigration, Tampa ranks seventh in the United States, exceeding New Orleans and Galveston, and it is twelfth among the cities of the United States as a revenue producer for the national treasury. The customs collected at this port in 1885 amounted to $683; in 1912 they totaled $1,867,764. With the comple- tion of the Panama canal, to which Tampa is acknowledged to be, according to a resolution adopted by the Congress, the nearest point of importance in the United States, the commerce passing through this port will doubtless double in value within a few years, and the customs receipts will as surely keep pace.
CIGAR MANUFACTURES
While Tampa includes among its industries wood-working plants, foundries and machine shops, trunk, mattress, brush and broom factories and scores of smaller industries, its principal output is from its manufacture of clear Havana cigars. This manufacture was started here about 1888, and as late as 1893 there were but two factories in this city. There are more than two hundred of them today, many of them of the most modern construction, paying their fifteen thousand employees more than a quarter of a million dollars weekly for their services. More Havana cigars are made in Tampa than in any other city in the world, the average of a million a day exceeding the output of Cuba, where is grown all the tobacco used in their manufacture. While some of these cigars are sold for more than a dollar each, the average price by the thousand received by the manufacturers is $85. This great industry in Tampa pays to the United States Gov- ernment in customs and internal revenue taxes, about two and three- quarter millions of dollars annually. Tampa manufacturers make their own cigar boxes and several factories print their wrappers and labels.
CATHOLIC CATHEDRAL-TAMPA
VIEW IN CITY PARK, TAMPA
TAMPA BAY HOTEL AND PARK, TAMPA
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TRANSPORTATION FACILITIES
Tampa's rail facilities are ample for its immediate needs, the Sea- board Air Line, the Atlantic Coast Line and the Tampa Northern entering the city. These roads give the port through connections with the north, east and west. Their terminals are adequate to care for all inbound and outbound freight, whether by water or rail. There are regular lines of passenger and freight steamships plying between Tampa and New Orleans, Mobile, Key West, Havana and New York, making weekly and semi-weekly trips, and a freight line with bi-weekly sailings to Philadelphia. Both the Seaboard Air Linc and the Atlantic Coast Line are making terminal improvements, which will be of great advantage to Tampa, and with the completion of the Coast Line's west coast cut-off, this city will have direct and shorter connections with Atlanta, Montgomery, and Birmingham and through these cities to the north and west, and these connec- tions will bring large tonnage of freight from those sections to points via the Panama canal, passing through this port.
TAMPA'S MUNICIPAL GROWTH
A city's growth may be accurately gauged by its postoffice re- ceipts and its building permits, and in each of these items Tampa shows a splendid and persistent increase. Her postoffice receipts in 1912 were $188,027, an advance of eight percent over those of the previous year. The building permits for the same year involved an outlay of $1,838,011. A seven-story hotel was completed in 1912 and a ten-story hotel is under construction in the latter part of 1913. Improvements aggregating hundreds of thousands of dollars in value were made in the suburbs and are not included in the figures already given. The values involved in Tampa's building permits for 1912 exceeded those of nineteen American cities with populations ranging from forty-one thousand to one hundred and twenty-nine thousand.
Tampa has eight banks, three national and five operating under state charters, and the ninth was organized in 1913. The combined capital and surplus of these institutions were more than twelve hundred thousand and their deposits nine million dollars. These insti- tutions are managed by men who have conservatively extended accom- modations to all safe and worthy enterprises which make for the advancement of the section. Their faith in Tampa's future was
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evidenced by their taking more than six hundred thousand dollars of a recent issue of city bonds for municipal improvements.
Tampa is moving forward rapidly and its friends boast that it will be the principal city on the Gulf of Mexico within a generation. It has recently issued bonds for nearly two millions of dollars to be expended for municipal improvements, which will include a new city building, a Carnegie library, will add fifty miles of paved streets to a large mileage already in use, thirty miles of sewers, and a modern bridge over the Hillsborough river, connecting the business and the residential sections.
The Federal Government is spending an appropriation of nearly two millions of dollars in deepening an estuary, which when com- pleted will give eight additional miles of deep water frontage. " The city owns property along this improvement, controls its development and thus has the assurance of a port free to the commerce of the world. Congress has ordered to survey for thirty feet of water from the Gulf of Mexico to these docks.
Efficient public utilities corporations, owned and backed by for- eign capital, are spending a million of dollars in enlarging their plants and extending their systems, preparing for a city of one hun- dred thousand inhabitants in 1920. What better evidence can there be of the certainty of Tampa's rapid and substantial growth?
CHAPTER XXIII PENSACOLA BY LELAND J. HENDERSON
punruns P PENSACOLA marks the site of one of the earliest European settlements on the western continent. For almost four hundred years it has been a scene of activity, first, as an outpost where civilization met the opposition of Indian hatred; in later years, as the strategic value of the position was appreciated, Spanish authority in the Floridas encountered the spreading influ- ence of the French, whose pioneers had occupied the Mississippi val- ley and were seeking an outlet to the Gulf of Mexico. Still later the English made a third party to the fight for possession. And in the early decades of the twentieth century the arts of peace are find- ing in these same strategic advantages fitting place for their natural development.
Pensacola is located on the north Gulf coast of the United States. It is the metropolis of western Florida. It is the county seat of Escambia, the westernmost county of the state. It lies four miles from the gulf and seven miles from the mouth of Pensacola Bay, which is the finest natural or artificial harbor south of Newport News, and one of the finest in the world. Her wharves are ten miles from the outer harbor buoys in the Gulf of Mexico.
The section immediately tributary to Pensacola is known as the Perdido country, taking its name from the Perdido Bay and river, which separate Escambia county in Florida, from Baldwin county in Alabama. The two counties constitute the original Perdido coun- try, which is one of finest agricultural promise and which already has entered upon a splendid farm development.
EPOCHAL POINTS OF HISTORY
1528-Discovery of Pensacola Bay by Spanish Captain-General Panfilo de Narvaez, thirty-six years after the discovery of America by Columbus.
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1540-Second visit of white men to Pensacola Bay, under Capi- tano Malenado, commander of the Spanish fleet of Hernando de Soto. He names the harbor Puerta d'Anchusi.
1559-Don Tristram de Luna, a Spanish explorer, cast anchor in Pensacola Bay, August 14th, and called it Santa Maria. Settle- ment made by him on the site of what is now Fort Barrancas and called Santa Maria, thus antedating the founding of St. Augustine by six years. First church and church bells in the United States.
1562-Settlement of Santa Maria abandoned by de Luna.
1693-Don Andres de Pes, Spanish, enters bay and calls it Santa Maria de Galva.
1696-Resuscitation of Pensacola by another Spaniard, Don Andres de Arriola, on the former site of Santa Maria. The name Pensacola first applied to the settlement, probably from Pensacola, a fortified seaport town in Spain on the Mediterranean coast. Fort San Carlos built on present site of Fort Barrancas.
1699-French expedition under D'Iberville takes possession of the country west of the Perdido river. Settlement made at Biloxi, February 27th.
1702-Mobile settled by the French.
1719-French under D'Iberville capture Pensacola, May 14th, Pensacola and Fort San Carlos destroyed.
1720-Treaty of peace signed between Spain and France.
1723-Pensacola restored by France to Spain. Settlement made on Santa Rosa Island at point near the present site of the Life Sav- ing Station.
1743-Beginning of lumber business in Pensacola.
1754-Settlement on Santa Rosa Island, a low sand spit, destroyed by storm. Settlement removed to north side of the bay, on present site of Pensacola.
1763-Cession of Florida to Great Britain by Spain.
1764-Limits of East and West Florida established, with Pen- sacola as capital of West Florida. Pensacola surveyed and laid off by English. Streets named, and George Street, now Palafox Street, extended through swamp to Gage Hill, now Lee Square.
1765-Drainage of swamps in Pensacola started.
1767-Courtesies exchanged between Pensacola and Philadel- phia.
1772-Fort built on Gage Hill and named Fort George for King George III, on the present site of Lee Square. Communication kept up by signal with Tartar Point, now the Navy Yard, and Red Cliff,
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UNLOADING CARGO OF MAHOGANY LOGS
U. S. BATTLESHIPS AT ANCHOR IN PENSACOLA HARBOR
NAVAL STORES YARDS, PENSACOLA
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now Fort Barrancas. Powder magazine on site of present Fort Redoubt.
1773-First election in Pensacola called by Governor of British West Florida to elect assemblymen. Its failure on account of length of term of assemblymen causing opposition from the people. Pen- ton, Leslie & Company, a Scotch house of great wealth, engages in business; their building still stands as hospital of James Herron.
1779-Value of Pensacola Harbor recognized by British Gov- ernment and site for navy yard selected, adjoining the town on the west.
1780-Town visited by slight earthquake shock. Famine at Pen- sacola and Fort George.
1781-Fort San Bernado built one-third mile north of Fort George. Pensacola taken by the Spanish.
1783-Sawmills, brickyards and tanyards established at Pensa- cola.
1796-Town laid out between one-quarter and one-half miles from Fort San Carlos by Vincente Folch Juan, who named it San Carlos de Barancas. His plan was to substitute this town for Pensacola as the capital, but it was defeated. Beginning of the mutilation of the English plan of Pensacola. Ship Pensacola, eight hundred tons, built at Caranaro, the cove in which the Marine Railway is now situated.
1808-Name of George Street changed to Palafox Street for Jose de Palafox y Melzi, a captain-general of Aragon, Spain. Zaragossa Street named for a city of Spain. Baylen Street named for Baylen, a city of Spain. Romana Street named for Marquis de Romana, the most illustrious general Spain produced during the great Peninsular war. Tarragona Street named for Tarragona, a city of Spain.
1812-Pensacola a base of Indian supplies in the War of 1812.
1814-Pensacola and fortifications again taken by the British. Gen. Andrew Jackson begins march on Pensacola, October 27th. Holds conference with Don Manuel Gonzalez, owner of a cattle ranch at Vacarai Baja, now Oakfield, six miles north of Pensacola on the Louisville & Nashville Railway. Forts Barrancas and St. George surrendered to General Jackson, November 7th. Fort St. George blown up by General Jackson, November 9th. He departs from Pensacola.
1818-General Jackson begins second invasion of West Florida in May and captures Pensacola and Fort George. Appoints Colonel King as civil and military governor. Florida ceded to the United States, but not ratified.
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1819-Pensacola restored to Spain by United States.
1820-Constitutional Convention of Alabama memorializes Con- gress to embrace West Florida within the boundaries of that state.
1821-Treaty ratified by Spain, February 19th. General Jackson appointed Provisional Governor and proceeds to Pensacola from New Orleans. Makes headquarters at Fifteen-Mile House, or Gonzalia, the cattle ranch of Manuel Gonzalez, now the site of Gonzalez, Flor- ida, on the Louisville & Nashville Railway. Change of flags takes place on July 16th.
1822-Congress established territorial government for Florida with W. P. Duval of Kentucky as first Governor. Legislative Coun- cil convenes in Pensacola, but on account of fever adjourns to the Fifteen-Mile House, or Gonzalia, which house is still standing, and here the Florida Statutes of 1822 were enacted.
INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS
The real industrial development of Pensacola has come since 1903. Four years of that time were occupied in preparation, and actual physical construction has been in progress during the last six years. This will be shown by the following figures:
During the year 1912 the Pensacola Commercial Association itself has set the pace for the city with its increase in membership of more than 200 percent, and an increase in revenue of more than 50 percent.
There has been an increase of 5 percent in the postoffice receipts ; of 17.8 percent in the exports, and of 231/2 percent in building operations.
During the decennium ending December 31, 1912, the mileage of sanitary sewers has been increased nearly 1100 percent; of storm sewers, 2200 percent; of paved streets, 8300 percent; of paved side- walks, 2200 percent; and of water mains, 143 percent; the assessed valuation of city property, 131 percent; the number of buildings (three story and over), 300 percent; the number of telephones in use, 300 percent; postoffice receipts, 240 percent; exports, 71 percent; bank deposits, 143 percent; and bank assets, 176 percent, for the banks in business during the entire period. The city has been author- ized to issue bonds to the extent of $1,681,000.
DEATH RATE
The death rate in Pensacola of 14.4 for whites and of 24.26 for negroes, for each 1,000 of the respective populations, is too high. It
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is occasioned, in part, by the fact that invalids seek the city and while many are benefited by natural conditions of climate, this class of pop- ulation tends to increase the death rate. The negro death rate is greater than the birth rate of the race. It is 70 percent higher than the white death rate.
HARBOR FACILITIES
Despite the fact that in the old days vessels were much smaller and the number entering and leaving the port in 1902 was greater than in 1912, the tonnage in the latter year was much larger.
Pensacola is fast becoming a leading cotton port in the United States. She almost holds the supremacy as a lumber export port, and occupies the second or third place in the export of naval stores.
Pensacola has four railroads already built to her limits or under construction. Her superior harbor and her accessibility from the entire central part of the Unites States makes this a natural railroad cen- ter. From the center of population of the United States the shortest rail route to any seaboard point, is to Pensacola. Recently authorized public wharves and the belt railway makes Pensacola a "free port."
All the improvements in Pensacola's harbor have cost the Federal Government but $1,297,000, less perhaps than the development of any other important port in the country. At small additional cost this harbor could be given a depth of fifty feet.
The payroll of Pensacola's industries amounted to $2,000,000 in 1912.
ADVANTAGES TO MANUFACTURES
In considering the advantages of Pensacola as a manufacturing center, climate must not be lost sight of. Its mildness reduces heat- ing for human comfort to a minimum. Lack of extremes of summer heat and winter cold causes a minimum of contraction and expan- sion of metals. Waterways in the south are never closed to traffic by ice, as in northern latitudes. The climate permits outdoor labor in every month of the year. The average annual temperature is 68°; the annual rainfall, 561/4 inches; the wind velocity, 9.1 miles an hour. Drinking water from a health viewpoint, is absolutely pure. The land is undulating, with an elevation of from 90 to 110 feet above sea level; surface drainage is good; streets are well shaded by trees in the residence districts. Few mosquitoes are found here because of the topography, drainage and absence of low lands. In the entire county of Escambia three are less than four hundred and fifty acres of
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swamp. The average cost of living in Pensacola is not higher than in other cities of approximately the same population.
FACTORY SITES
On the city side of Pensacola Bay there are available for wharf purposes some six miles of shore line adjacent to the deep water of the harbor. Besides this, on the east side of the city is a fine inner basin of considerable width and some four miles long, suitable for pleasure craft and bathing, running through the East Hill residence section. Immediately west of the city is a similar basin along which are located some of the city's industries. Further west and toward the mouth of the harbor is a great natural basin many miles in length and of varying width, offering facilities for barge traffic and sites for factories to an almost unlimited extent.
If a city of the territorial area of Seattle, which by the last Federal census has a population about ten times that of Pensacola, were to be placed here, it would cover all the lower end of Escambia county to a line drawn from the Perdido river at Muscogee, through the Can- tonment to the Escambia river. It would have twenty-five miles waterfront on Pensacola Bay and Grand Lagoon, eighteen miles on Perdido Bay, ten miles on the Perdido river, and seven miles on the Escambia river. `A location for industrial and manufacturing plants more nearly ideal than this would be difficult to imagine.
RAW MATERIAL
Domestic: As shown by the record of exports, which for the fis- cal year ending June 30, 1912, were valued at $24,037,070. They included more than two hundred thousand bales of cotton; of lumber, sawn and hewn timber having a value of more than five and one-half million dollars; 383,000 barrels of rosin and 3,100,000 gallons of tur- pentine; 598,000 staves; coal, copper ingot, phosphate, pitch and tar, tobacco, steel rails, pig iron, cotton-seed oil cakes and miscellaneous articles.
Some of the resources of the south, partly tributary to Pensacola, indicated by the annual output, are: Coal, 131,970,000 tons; iron ore, 5,736,000 tons; phosphate rock, 3,400,000 tons; petroleum, 84,- 800,000 barrels; natural gas, 290,000,000,000 cubic feet; sulphur, 690,000 tons; grain, 1,104,200,000 bushels; cotton, 13,870,000 bales; cotton seed, 5,500,000 tons; rice, 24,000,000 bushels; lumber, 20,000,-
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PALAFOX STREET AND PARKWAY
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THE PLAZA SURROUNDED BY BUSINESS SECTION. SHIPPING IN THE DISTANCE
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000,000, feet; pig iron, 3,054,000 tons; coke, 7,974,000 tons; Port- land cement, 11,000,000 barrels. The south is the center of the world's production of lead and zinc, and is the main source in this country of bauxite for the manufacture of aluminum.
Foreign: As shown by the imports, which for the fiscal year ending with June 30, 1912, had a value of $1,534,115. These con- sisted of 12,800,000 superficial feet of mahogany logs; 1,200,000 feet of cedar logs, and the following articles in varying amounts: copper ore, muriate of potash, sulphate of potash, kainit, manure salts, sulphur ore, iron pyrites, sisal grass, nitrate of soda, sulphate of ammonia, chalk, guano and other miscellaneous articles.
While the articles already listed constitute those arriving and leav- ing through the Port of Pensacola, many, if not all, of the im- ports of the United States used in manufacturing should be con- sidered available to Pensacola, for the reason that foreign commerce now goes through this port to Austria, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, France, Scotland, Mexico, Belgium, England, Italy, Cuba, Haiti, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Morocco, Canary Islands, Denmark, Jamaica, British West Indies, Egypt, Azores, Portuguese Africa, British Honduras, French Africa, San Domingo, British East Africa and Ireland.
POWER AND FUEL
For the present coal only is available for power for Pensacola. In the mines of Alabama are 69,000,000,000 short tons of bituminous coal. Up to the year 1908, the total production of coal in the United States had been 10,218,000,000 short tons. In other words, Alabama has six times as much coal stored in her mines as had been produced in the entire United States prior to 1908.
The coal production in the United States for 1909, was 379,744,- 527 tons, having a value of $405,486,777, at $1.07 per ton. At this rate, the bituminous coal of Alabama is worth nearly seventy-four billion dollars. The value of bituminous coal at Baltimore in 1910, was $2.60 per ton. At Pensacola it was $2.35 a ton, allowing $1.25 for the coal and $1.10 for transportation from the mines. This cost of carriage will be reduced to 75 cents when inland water transporta- tion between the Warrior coal fields and West Florida shall have been provided, and this is now under way.
An enormous development of hydro-electric power in the terri- tory adjacent to Pensacola has already been partially accomplished.
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The lines of this development will reach this city and section within a few months, bringing motive power for manufacturing at low cost and of large efficiency.
LABOR
The population of Pensacola and its suburbs is about thirty thou- sand. Nearly twenty per cent of this population was on the pay- rolls of Pensacola's industries in 1912. The average yearly wage was $411.
PENSACOLA'S MARKET
Pensacola claims as her trade territory a large part of the pro- ducing section of the United States, for the following reasons: The distance of the center of population of the United States to Tampa, Florida, is 1,158 miles; to Galveston, Texas, 1,145 miles; to New Orleans, 878 miles; to Mobile, 771 miles, and to Pensacola, 754 miles.
In other words, the Atlantic ports are further from the Missis- sippi valley than is Pensacola; the eastern part of the United States, including the Appalachian hardwoods, and the iron and coal region is nearer to Pensacola than to any other Gulf port. The central western states and the Great Lakes region are nearer to Pensacola than to any other Gulf port, save Mobile; while the great Missis- sippi valley is nearer to Pensacola than to any other Gulf ports, save Mobile and New Orleans. In addition, Pensacola has water competition with the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of the United States, and with the opening of the Panama Canal it will have competition with the Pacific Coast ports for South American trade.
TRANSPORTATION FACILITIES
The existing land facilities for transportation are the following: The Louisville & Nashville Railroad, which handles annually at Pensacola 55,000 cars of freight. It is a trunk line touching the Mis- sissippi river at St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans, with north- eastern terminals at Cincinnati, southeastern terminals at Atlanta and rail connections to all parts of the United States and Canada. This road uses in Pensacola the terminals of the Gulf Transit Company, which owns wharves with an aggregate extent along a 28-foot water front of nearly seven thousand feet. The road has extensive yard room and trackage and freight depot, and has just completed a pas- senger station at a cost of $125,000.
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The Gulf, Florida & Alabama Railroad, soon to be completed, will handle through Pensacola annually 325,000 tons of coal, 12,000 cars of lumber, 1,150 cars of naval stores and more than eighty thou- sand bales of cotton. This road has already constructed 2,700 feet of wharfage at 22 feet of water, over which it is expected that a large tonnage of ocean freight is to be handled.
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