Tampa, Florida

About

Tampa ( TAM-pə) is a major city on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida and the county seat of Hillsborough County. Tampa's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. It is the third-most-populous city in Florida (after Jacksonville and Miami), 13th-most-populous in the Southeast, and 49th-most-populous city in the country, with a population of 403,364 at the 2020 census. The Tampa Bay metropolitan area, at over 3.42 million residents, is the second-largest metropolitan area in Florida and 17th-largest in the United States. The Greater Tampa Bay area has over 4 million residents and generally includes the Tampa and Sarasota metro areas.

Tampa's origins can be traced to the establishment of Fort Brooke in 1824, soon after the United States acquired the Florida territory from Spain. The surrounding settlement of Tampa was formally incorporated in 1849 but remained small and isolated until the mid-1880s, when the arrival of Henry B. Plant's railroad and Vicente Martinez Ybor's cigar factories jump-started a period of rapid economic and population growth. "Tampa Town" was reincorporated into the city of Tampa in 1887 and had evolved into a prosperous modern community by the early 20th century.