[1][2] The neighborhood grew rapidly during the 1890s, quickly evolving from a primitive outpost with streets of loose sand populated mainly by young Cuban and Spanish men seeking work into a bustling city with modern amenities and a diverse demographic makeup.

Some cigar factories closed, others ended the hand-rolled tradition and turned to mechanization to reduce costs, and remaining operations sharply decreased production and payrolls, resulting in widespread unemployment and hardship across the entire neighborhood.

This process accelerated further through the 1950s and 60s, when the federal Urban Renewal program and the construction of Interstate 4 resulted in the demolition of many structures, including hundreds of housing units.

Planned redevelopment never took place, and, with its commercial district and social core virtually abandoned, Ybor City lapsed into a period of neglect and decay.

He had heard that there were many guava trees growing wild in the Tampa Bay area and, looking to add to his company's product line, set out to find them in November 1884.

Ybor was a fellow Spaniard who had built a prosperous cigar-making operation in Havana, Cuba based on his El Príncipe de Gales (Prince of Wales) brand.

Several southern American port cities such as Mobile, Alabama; Pensacola, Florida; and Galveston, Texas had offered land and other concessions to attract Ybor's factories to their town, but none of the proposals were satisfactory.

Months later, in September 1885, Ybor and Haya set out on a "fact-finding mission" to the most promising relocation sites, hoping to finalize a deal and begin moving their operations soon thereafter.

But on October 5, 1885, as the men were literally about to depart, the Tampa Board of Trade, including W. C. Brown and W. B. Henderson, offered to subsidize the $4000 difference in the price of the land Ybor wished to buy.

[4] Ybor would have to convince potential employees to leave established communities in Key West (and Cuba and New York) to help build a frontier settlement.

To increase the number of jobs (and thus the pool of available workers), Ybor encouraged other cigar manufacturers to move to his new colony by offering cheap land and a free factory building if they agreed to meet certain job-creation quotas.

This cycle of growth lasted until the late 1920s, by which time Ybor City was home to hundreds of cigar making businesses and tens of thousands of permanent residents and had a thriving cultural scene.

[11] There were no sidewalks or streetlights, and nighttime travelers often carried a lantern to find their way and a gun for protection from alligators, bears, panthers, or other wildlife that often wandered into town from the surrounding swamps, forests, and scrubland.

Almost all of them were originally from the poverty-stricken Sicilian towns of Alessandria Della Rocca and Santo Stefano Quisquina, though many had first tried to find work in New Orleans, New York City, or the sugar cane fields of the Kissimmee/St.

Consequently, the ongoing Cuban struggle for independence from Spanish colonial rule was a topic of intense interest and constant tension in the immigrant community.

[5] Jose Marti, the "Apostle of Cuban Independence",[22] visited Ybor City and West Tampa many times, delivering several passionate speeches to audiences of thousands.

Over 30,000 troops (about double Tampa's total population at the time[25]) and thousands of railcars full of supplies arrived to await orders to ship out,[26] providing sudden prosperity for local businesses but stretching the small town's resources to the limit.

[5][28] As a group, they overwhelmingly choose to put down roots and settle in Ybor City for the long term, though some migration for family and work reasons continued.

The "Latin" residents of Ybor City created a bustling community that combined Cuban, Spanish, Italian, and Jewish culture into a unique mix.

These clubs were founded in Ybor City's early days (with Centro Español established first in 1891) as places where new arrivals could find support and community among other people from their country of origin.

They also organized events such as dances and picnics, sometimes hiring buses for outings at Ballast Point Park, Clearwater Beach, or other locations outside of Ybor City itself.

Though racism among the residents of Ybor City was not generally an issue,[32] it was situated in the American Deep South in the era of Jim Crow, so the clubs had to follow the segregationist laws of Tampa.

Because of the lector system, even cigar workers who could not read were exposed to classic literature and were conversant on political philosophy and current events both in Ybor City and around the world.

Many smokers found themselves unable to afford luxury items and switched to cheaper cigarettes, weakening the neighborhood's dominant industry and starting the area on a slow economic and social decline.

To help keep food on the table during hard times, many residents of Ybor City plowed under their yards or vacant lots to plant vegetables and bought cows, goats, and chickens to provide milk, eggs, and meat for the family, with any surplus sold around town.

Besides the disappointment about the failure of a fervently supported cause, the end of the war cut many ties between Spanish residents of Ybor City and their mostly Republican families back in Spain.

Even when demand quickly increased to record levels during American's post-war boom, the number of workers employed in Ybor City's factories continued to decrease due to more efficient machines.

Ybor City's cigar industry had been in decline for years by the early 1960s, but the most serious blow of all came in February 1962, when rising tensions between Fidel Castro's Cuban government and the United States led to an embargo on all imports from Cuba, including tobacco.

By the early 1970s, very few businesses and residents remained in the formerly bustling commercial center of Ybor City around 7th Avenue, most notably the Columbia Restaurant[55] The northern portion of the neighborhood (now known as V.M.

Despite years of public and private attempts to spur economic growth, urban decay and high poverty have long been widespread in this area, with many residents still living in former cigar workers' homes built almost a century ago.