Ruskin, a utopian, founded the Guild of St George, a celebration of workmanship that underpinned the Arts and Crafts movement of William Morris.

The Ruskin Commongood Society platted Ruskin on February 19, 1910, and filed the plat on March 9, 1910, in the Hillsborough County Court House, with lots for the college, the business district, two parks, and for the founding families, with only white people allowed to own or lease land in the community.

Albert Dickman's house, finished in 1910, on the banks of the Little Manatee River, is one of the few structures left standing from the founding of Ruskin.

Continuing with the college's former practices, students worked a portion of each day as part of their education and as a way to pay for tuition and board.

At the peak of the college's prosperity it had 160 students..[6] By 1913, the community had a cooperative general store, a canning factory, a telephone system, an electric plant supplying electricity to both public and private buildings, a weekly paper, and regular boat freight and passenger service to Tampa.

Because of the growing importance of truck farming, these roads and others were built to facilitate the transportation of produce to local markets throughout the 1920s.

These residents supported a sawmill, a turpentine still, a syrup factory, a blacksmith, a newspaper, a lawyer, two carpenters, and three general stores.

It had six hotels, two sawmills, one turpentine still, a public library, the Ruskin Telephone Company, four groceries, one garage, a well driller, two restaurants, a dry goods dealer, a carpenter, and a number of fruit and truck growers.

Despite the deed restrictions against African Americans owning or leasing property, 140 black people resided in Ruskin.

Due to the rapid growth of tomato culture and a cooperative arrangement among Ruskin farmers, the town was again a thriving community.

Shortly after the war, Ruskin slowly became more and more suburban as people not related to the agricultural business moved into the community.

By 1982, Ruskin produced approximately 3,000 acres (1,200 ha) of tomatoes a year, and one of the world's largest tomato-packing houses operated in nearby Apollo Beach.

The South County Coalition for Community Concerns (SCCCC) established in 1984 was a Ruskin-based Coalition comprising public and private health and human service organizations, government agencies, schools, churches and concerned citizens from South County.

The history of the SCCCC (1980-2002) outlines, programs, celebrations and mutual support to bring a better quality of life to people of rural south Hillsborough County.

The end of the traditional Ruskin Days parade (due to rising costs) and a great fire that wiped out the popular Thriftway supermarket and adjacent furniture, hardware and MC Topps department stores changed the landscape of the town center.

In 2009, the Dickman family donated the land where the new Ruskin Campus of Hillsborough Community College was erected, across the street from Earl J. Lennard High School.

[12] At more than one million square feet, the Amazon warehouse is nearly ten times the size of the average Home Depot store.

[citation needed] In 2016, Amazon announced it would add an on-site training center for employees to enroll in college courses.

It is inspired by and linked to the international Campaign for Drawing first initiated in Great Britain to honor John Ruskin.

[16] THE BIG DRAW-Ruskin celebrated the vision of Ruskin who believed in drawing as a tool for understanding and knowledge and promoted the importance of the arts in education and community life.

The final design concept was based on John Ruskin's social ideal that human happiness requires the mix of the head, heart and hand.

Mural imagery includes references to historic Ruskin, the agricultural and environmentally sensitive setting across the bay from urban centers, development and movement to future possibility.

The 2009 Community Mural-in-the-Round Project was coordinated by Josette Urso and the mural was painted on the Mary & Martha House building.

The SouthShore Community Resource Center, administered by the County, provides social services in Ruskin.

It also is responsible for weather forecasts and severe storm warnings for the western Florida coastal waters from Cedar Key to Bonita Beach and out 60 nautical miles (110 km; 69 mi) which includes Tampa Bay and Charlotte Harbor.

On October 30, 2014, Gannon University, based from Erie, Pennsylvania, announced that it would offer graduate health professional programs at a new campus in Ruskin.

The site was chosen to meet increased demand for high-quality graduate education in disciplines that served the rapidly expanding health care sector of the Florida economy.