This is the business and vacation hub of Florida's west coast. Tampa, Florida's third-largest city and its leading industrial metropolis, has a colorful waterfront and a beautiful bay drive. Within it is Ybor City, a Spanish, Cuban, and Italian enclave of narrow streets and cigarmakers, and MacDill Air Force Base, headquarters of the 56th TT Wing, US Special Operations Command, and the US Central Command.

Sprawled around the mouth of the Hillsborough River at the head of Tampa Bay, the city traces its origins to Fort Brooke, established to oversee Seminole Indians, who recently had moved here from Georgia and northern Florida. An early center for Florida's cattle industry, Tampa enjoyed brisk trade with Cuba and prospered. However, subjected to hit-and-run raids during the Civil War, the city suffered a decline until 1884, when Henry Plant's narrow-gauge South Florida Railroad reached the city. Determined to outdo his East Coast rival Henry Morrison Flagler, Plant built the opulent Tampa Bay Hotel and opened it with a flamboyance undreamed of in this remote outpost. Teddy Roosevelt trained his Rough Riders in the backyard of the hotel. In 1886, Vincente Martinez Ybor moved his cigar factory and its workers here from Key West. Most of the other cigarmakers moved with him, establishing Ybor City.

Today, the port of Tampa handles more than 50 million tons of shipping a year. Its cigar factories turn out 3 million cigars each working day; two huge breweries are in operation in one of 33 industrial parks; two citrus plants and a variety of other factories are here. Some of the world's largest phosphate mines are nearby, and a new technique to extract uranium from mine wastes has revitalized this industry.