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Plant City Information
Blessed with abundant natural resources and rich farmlands, Plant City provides a wealth of opportunity. From the towered factories of the phosphate industry to verdant citrus groves, from the steady hum of goods in transport to broad fields with row upon row of berries soaking up the temperate Florida sun, Plant City is a place for growing.
At the hub of eastern Hillsborough County, Plant City lies 10 miles west of Lakeland and 24 miles east of the protected waters of Tampa Bay. Entering Plant City from Interstate 4 or from US Highway 92, streets canopied with ancient oaks embrace and welcome you to a city that wears its past proudly.
Strangers are greeted as friends as they walk the brick paved streets of our town. The old is not thrown away but celebrated in Plant City. An old office building becomes international headquarters for the Paso Fino Horse Association ; an old railroad station turns to exhibiting and teaching Plant City history. But, this is no small town trying to revive its past. Plant City is about today and tomorrow!
The area surrounding Plant City is a patchwork quilt of pasturelands and citrus groves, strawberry fields and nursery farms. The agricultural fabric is laced together by an infrastructure of highways and railroads that move the fruits of labor to far-flung markets all over the world. Plant City's high standard of living comes from this land. Mining and agriculture and the businesses that support these industries remain the foothold of the local economy, after more than 120 years.
But the strawberry is the crop for which Plant City is most widely known. The majority of all the winter strawberries in the US are grown on 7,000 acres of farmland surrounding Plant City. This area, rich in minerals and fertile soil, has a history of prosperity and promise that precedes the Civil War era.
In the early 1800s, after the Spanish ceded Florida to the United States, the territory was a wilderness, populated by indigenous people know as the Seminole. In 1842, the federal government made land available to pioneers through the Armed Occupation Act. One could earn 160 acres by homesteading the land for five years. A few hardy souls settled in the area near Plant City and went about farming and rehabilitating citrus groves abandoned by the Spanish settlers before them. During this period, there were occasional wars and skirmishes with the Seminole tribes who were protecting the land on which their ancestors had flourished. Still, these early pioneers persisted and continued developing the wilderness.
When the Civil War broke out, many homesteads were left in ruin and abandoned. War's end saw renewal of these homesteads, and people seeking opportunity came to inhabit the area. Cotton, logging, phosphate, and citrus were the dominant industries during this period. Among those who came with plans for a dynamic future was Henry B. Plant.
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