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Tampa
A Gulf Coast port on Tampa Bay
Tampa sits on the eastern shore of Tampa Bay, a large, deep natural harbor on Florida's Gulf Coast. The bay made it a major port — long the gateway for Florida phosphate and now a busy cruise and cargo hub — and the warm, flat coastal setting drew the cigar industry that built the historic Ybor City district. Founded around an army fort in the 1820s, it grew into the largest city on Florida's Gulf side.
The bay nearly surrounds the city, its low, flat shores lined with mangrove, beach, and barrier islands opening to the Gulf of Mexico. Together with St. Petersburg and Clearwater across the bay, Tampa anchors a Sun Belt metro of more than three million, in subtropical, hurricane-prone country at the meeting of bay and Gulf.