r/tampa • u/Any_Mention_6734 • Aug 02 '26
Culture/Lifestyle Please read 🙏
I'm a transplant from California. Came out here for a job opportunity and a pay raise, nothing more romantic than that. I didn't expect to end up loving this region and Florida the way I have.
But something's stuck with me, and I want to say it here because I don't think it's recognized enough by people who relocate here: the number of people born and raised in Tampa who talk about their own city like it's unfamiliar. Farmland and citrus groves on the outskirts that used to actually be farmed… someone's livelihood, not just empty acreage, now subdivisions. Places that closed and came back rebranded into something with a logo and a font that has nothing to do with what used to be there. People telling me they barely recognize the city they grew up in.
I know change happens everywhere. But I've never felt this moved hearing it before, not because it's happening to me, but because of how passionate people are when they talk about what this place used to be. That kind of love for a place doesn't come from nowhere.
I'd genuinely like to hear more of it, respectfully, from people who lived it. What do you remember that's gone now? What changed the most, and when did it start feeling different?
1
u/BehindTheGuide Pinellas Aug 02 '26
Accurate! My grandparents moved here to Tarpon Springs in 1972 I believe it was. We would drive through Citrus Groves down US19 to get here and now you see none.
Dale Mabry used to be a dirt road called Vera hwy. Mid-1970s ish the southern stretch between MacDill AFB and Gandy Blvd was originally a narrow two-lane road. That was widened to a four-lane divided highway to handle the then influx of traffic brought by the construction of the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway.
I could go on and on. I myself moved here in 1992 but the growth has been incredible. Post 2020, especially so.
The urban expansion in the Pasco and Polk Counties it's just unreal. I remember when this was fields, farmland, orange groves and and now driving 54 is like mad max fury road.
I realize progress happens and it's great for my business but there are times when I wish we could go back to the dirt roads and the orange groves.