A growing encyclopedia of Mullet Key and Fort De Soto: the people who passed through, the events that shaped the island, the places around it, and the military post itself. Every name in the main archive that has a page lives here, and every page links onward to the others. Entries marked soon are written and verified in the research files and are being built out next.
The “Happy Hermit” of Cabbage Key, who gave away what he grew and dressed as Santa for the children of the bay.
hermit recluse cabbage key palm hut local legend santaThe British Admiralty surveyor who named Mullet Key in 1765 and urged a fort upon it. Died a prisoner of war.
english british surveyor cartographer mapmaker chart map royal navy scotland scottishThe Spanish pilot who drew the first true map of Tampa Bay in 1757 and named its landmarks.
spanish spain pilot surveyor cartographer map chart navyThe overlooked pilot who reconnoitered the bay a year before Celi.
spanish spain pilot draftsman surveyor map chartThe Patriot surveyor and mapmaker, Gauld's counterpart, who recorded the island's first buildings and also died a prisoner.
british dutch surveyor cartographer naturalist mapmaker mapThe Baltimore sea captain whose multicultural fishing rancho on the bay was burned in the Seminole War.
british american fishing rancho fisheries trader mulletThe first documented settler of Pinellas, an Afro-Caribbean immigrant who brought citrus to the bay's shores.
french france count cigar citrus grapefruit planter settler caribbeanThe saw magnate whose record-breaking 1881 land deal drained Florida's debts and planted the first resort town on the bay below Mullet Key.
disston land purchase 1881 saw drainage everglades kissimmee disston city gulfport boca ciega land boom developer philadelphia internal improvement fundFounder of St. Augustine, who built the bay's first European fort in 1567 and saw its garrison annihilated.
spanish spain conquistador admiral founder st augustine adelantadoThe conquistador whose 1539 expedition landed on the lower bay and gave the fort, much later, its name.
spanish spain conquistador explorer expedition entradaThe first European to reach Florida, in 1513; killed by the Calusa on his return in 1521.
spanish spain conquistador explorer discoverer fountain of youthThe Dominican who came unarmed to convert the bay's peoples in 1549 and was clubbed to death for it.
spanish spain dominican priest missionary friar martyr churchWhose disastrous 1528 expedition was the first European landing on Tampa Bay.
spanish spain conquistador explorer expeditionThe enslaved North African of the Narvaez expedition, among the first Africans in the present-day U.S. and the first to cross the Southwest.
african black moor moroccan enslaved slave explorerThe free African conquistador who reached Florida with Ponce in 1513, fifteen years before Estevanico.
african black free conquistador explorerThe captive saved by a chief's daughter, who became de Soto's interpreter, a Pocahontas tale three generations early.
spanish spain captive interpreter survivor rescueThe mutilated chief of Uzita who condemned, then spared, the captive Juan Ortiz.
native indian chief uzita ucita tocobaga tribeThe chief across the bay who sheltered Ortiz for a decade and kept his word.
native indian chief tribeThe Calusa king whose alliance with Menendez brought the first Spanish garrison to the bay in 1567.
native indian calusa king cacique chief tribe mound keyThe inland paramount chief to whom the coastal towns of Tampa Bay paid tribute.
native indian chief paramount tribe timucuaShipwrecked as a boy and held seventeen years by the Calusa; his memoir holds the earliest written “Tampa.”
spanish spain captive shipwreck survivor memoir calusaThe formerly enslaved West African who led Fort Mose, the first free Black town in what is now the U.S.
african black free escaped slave militia fort mose st augustineThe harbor pilot at the wheel of the Summit Venture, called the thirty-sixth victim of the Skyway.
harbor pilot captain skyway bridge summit ventureThe eighteen-year-old who gave his life saving shipmates aboard the Blackthorn; a cutter now bears his name.
coast guard hero medal sailor blackthorn cutterThe Narváez treasurer who landed on the bay in 1528 and was one of four men to walk out of the continent alive.
spanish spain conquistador explorer narvaez survivor shipwreck treasurer la relacion accountThe Seminole leader of the last war, whose 1858 surrender sent his people through Egmont Key into exile.
seminole native indian chief war removal exile egmont holata micco alligator chief third seminole warThe four accounts that are the only record of de Soto's landing on the bay and the captive Juan Ortiz.
spanish chronicle chronicler account source witness elvas biedma ranjel garcilaso de soto entrada narrativeThe two captains who, with Cabeza de Vaca and Estevanico, were the only men of the 1528 Narváez landing to cross the continent and live.
spanish narvaez survivor captain dorantes castillo estevanico cabeza de vaca shipwreck explorerThe Coast Guard's worst peacetime disaster, a collision in the channel off Mullet Key, January 1980.
coast guard shipwreck wreck collision disaster ship cutter sinkingA freighter, a squall, and the bridge across the bay's mouth, May 1980. Thirty-five dead.
bridge collapse disaster sunshine skyway summit venture ship freighterThe hurricane that destroyed Fort Brooke and carved John's Pass through the barrier islands.
hurricane storm gale disaster floodThe first major storm since 1848; it began Battery Bigelow's collapse and split Hog Island in two.
hurricane storm disaster flood tarpon springsThe bay's first European fort, wiped out within a year, 331 years before Fort De Soto.
spanish spain fort garrison tocobaga soldiersThe conquistador's arrival on the lower bay, documented by four chronicles.
spanish spain conquistador landing expedition 1539 entradaEleven years before de Soto, a larger army came ashore here and all but four of them died.
spanish spain conquistador landing expedition 1528 narvaez cabeza de vaca entrada contactA barge-and-freighter collision off Mullet Key that fouled the bay's beaches with oil.
When German submarines brought World War II to the approaches of Tampa Bay; the wrecks still lie on the Gulf floor.
ww2 wwii world war two submarine u-boat uboat german nazi navy torpedo tankerWhen captured Seminoles, Billy Bowlegs among them, were held on Egmont Key for deportation west.
native indian seminole removal billy bowlegs prison camp trail of tears warThe offshore light at the bay's mouth and the three keepers who tended it.
lighthouse light beacon shoal navigationThe sister island across the channel: lighthouse, Seminole camp, Fort Dade, and a slow drowning.
island lighthouse fort dade ferry state park beachFort De Soto's twin on Egmont Key, the long-range-gun half of the two-fort system.
fort egmont battery gun coastal defenseThe famous inlet a single 1848 hurricane carved through the barrier islands.
inlet pass pirate treasure levique beach madeira fishingThe federal quarantine on Mullet Key, 1889 to 1937, that screened arrivals at the port of Tampa.
quarantine disease immigration health yellow fever hospital portBuilt 1848, wrecked by hurricane, rebuilt 1858, its lens smuggled away in the Civil War.
lighthouse light beacon keeper egmontThe deep-water entrance to Tampa Bay, charted since 1757 and guarded ever since.
channel ship port navigation pilots harbor entranceThe great yellow-cabled span that leaps the channel beside Mullet Key, built to outlast the disaster that felled the bridge before it.
sunshine skyway bridge cable stayed yellow figg summit venture bob graham fishing pier tampa bay span tower i-275The fortune in fertilizer rock that flowed out through the bay's channel, and gave the nation a reason to fortify its mouth.
phosphate fertilizer mining bone valley peace river port tampa henry plant economy trade export cigars channel commerceThe civilian afterlife: how the abandoned fort became the county's largest park and a national No. 1 beach.
park beach camping fishing pier dog beach hours fees visit today ferry trail picnic kayak boat ramp dr beachThe toll road that opened the same day as the park and turned a boat-only island into a place you could drive to.
pinellas bayway road toll bridge causeway sr 679 sr 682 tierra verde access drive boca ciega 1962 ten cent bridgeHow an 1898 war scare finally fortified a key Robert E. Lee had marked in 1849; built in a rush for a war that ended first.
spanish american war 1898 construction origins robert e lee endicott historyThe eight 12-inch mortars under a hill of sand; four survive, the only ones of their kind in North America.
mortar mortars gun cannon artillery twelve inch 12-inch battery emplacementThe rapid-fire gun battery lost to the Gulf, named for an officer killed at Lundy's Lane in 1814.
gun cannon rapid fire battery erosion three inch 3-inchThe ordnance officer for whom the mortar battery was named.
colonel ordnance officer gettysburg civil war cannonMosquitoes, monotony, and “Soldier's Hole”: the lived misery of the post.
soldiers garrison troops mosquitoes daily life army postThe two-fort system, its minefield and mortars, and the primary-record correction of what Fort De Soto actually mounted.
coast defense guns mortar mine minefield fort dade armament artillery endicott panama mountWhen Mullet Key became a gunnery range for MacDill Field, and what the ground still holds.
ww2 wwii world war bombing gunnery range macdill bombs ordnance air corps targetThe great bomber base across the bay, whose crews trained over Mullet Key and gave Tampa Bay a grim wartime saying.
macdill air force base bomber b-26 marauder b-17 b-29 ww2 wwii world war training one a day in tampa bay leslie macdill widowmakerThe Safety Harbor people who ruled the bay when the Spanish came.
native indian mound safety harbor chief village tribe shellThe powerful shell-builders of the southwest coast who held Fontaneda and killed Ponce.
native indian calusa mound key fishing kingdom shell tribeThe seasonal fishing camps that tied the bay to Havana long before the fort.
cuban cuba spanish fishing rancho mullet havana tradeThe first free Black town in what is now the U.S., the root of the bay's freedom-seeker story.
african black free escaped slave militia st augustine sanctuaryThe maroon community at the mouth of Tampa Bay, destroyed in 1821.
african black maroon escaped slave refuge community sanctuary