EXPLORE Tarpon Springs

In the 1880s and 1890s, the first local sponge businesses were founded, and as the sponging industry grew, so did the City. Built around the sponging industry, tarpon Springs was once known as the “Venice of the South” and has long touted the moniker “The Sponge Capital of the World.” Tarpon Springs was the very first incorporated city in what is now Pinellas County, mainly populated at that time by farmers, fisherman, and spongers from the Florida Keys, the Bahamas, and immigrants from Greece. In 1888 when the Orange Belt Railway, the first railroad line in Pinellas County, arrived in Tarpon Springs it became a fast-growing wintering spot for wealthy northerners. Large Victorian homes owned by these wealthy “snowbirds” popped up all around the City’s Spring Bayou waterfront, becoming known as the “Golden Crescent.”