The Beginnings - Freedom Magazine Presents The History of Clearwater Part I

Predating the landing at Plymouth Rock was one final passage to this area. Captain Pedro Menendez, founder of Saint Augustine, ventured to this coast in 1567. Leaving behind a few soldiers and 10 Jesuit missionaries to establish a fort and missions, Menendez marched onward, pursuing a water route across Florida to the Atlantic Ocean. Chief Tocobaga and his Timucuan tribe quarreled with their new neighbors and refused to feed the starving soldiers. Nine months later, a supply expedition found the fort burned to the ground and its soldiers massacred. The Spaniards reciprocated by burning down Tocobaga’s village.

Peace then prevailed for 255 years before the white man returned in force to establish Florida as a United States territory, superseding Spanish and British rule. The Seminole tribe had migrated from the Carolinas and Georgia and settled here. Fishermen meandering from Key West strove to grow citrus trees but were driven away by the natives. The first white settler who stayed was Napoleon Bonaparte’s former schoolmate, a surgeon in the Emperor’s navy, Odet Philippe.

Pirates had been using the Tampa Bay area as a hideout and one of them directed Philippe with a secret map to this area, calling it “the most beautiful body of water in the world with the possible exception of the bay of Naples.” Landing at the present day site of Philippe Park in the mid-1830s, Philippe established his homestead, called Stain Helena plantation, and lived there until his death in 1869. Philippe is remembered as the man who first planted citrus trees in rows and possibly the one who introduced grapefruit into the United States.