What Tampa Bay looked like in 1776, when Florida was a British loyalist frontier

When Americans picture the year 1776, they usually imagine Philadelphia, New York, or Boston.They think of the Declaration of Independence, powdered wigs, and the birth of a new nation. But while the Founding Fathers debated liberty, the place we now know as Tampa Bay, Florida, was a world apart.There was no Tampa. No St. Petersburg. No Clearwater. Instead, the region was a remote frontier of mangrove islands, sprawling estuaries, and scattered settlements along one of the world's great natural harbors."Tampa Bay specifically in 1776 was very, very different than today, said Rodney Kite-Powell, director of the Touchton Map Library at the Tampa Bay History CenterA place of mangroves, marshes, and extraordinary abundanceDutch explorer Bernard Romans left behind one of the most detailed firsthand accounts of the Tampa Bay region during the Revolutionary era. In his 1776 book,A Concise Natural History of East and West Florida, he referred to the body of water we now call Tampa Bay as "the