Tarpon Springs, Florida

== History == The region, with a series of bayous feeding into the Gulf of Mexico, was settled by farmers and fishermen around 1876.

In 1882, Hamilton Disston, who in the previous year had purchased the land, ordered the creation of a town plan.

On February 12, 1887, Tarpon Springs became the first incorporated city in what is now Pinellas County.

Less than a year later on January 13, 1888, the Orange Belt Railway, the first railroad line to be built in what is now Pinellas County, arrived in the city.

The city's Rose Cemetery, where Black residents are interred, is believed to contain burials that began in the late 1800s; the earliest legible marked burial is from 1904.

In 1905, John Cocoris introduced the technique of sponge diving to Tarpon Springs by recruiting divers and crew members from Greece.

Arfaras Sponge Packing House === Library === The Tarpon Springs Public Library was founded in 1916 by Julia Roswell Smith Inness and other leading members of the Tarpon Spring...

In 1937, a plot of land was donated by John and Mabel Cheyney to build a new library on what later became known as Library Lane.

Groundbreaking for this building began in July 1938.

In 1947, a red tide algal bloom wiped out the sponge fields in the Gulf, causing many of the sponge boats and divers to switch to shrimping for their livelihood, while others le...