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Gibsonton is famous for being a "wintering town" for the traveling Carnival industry attracting carnival workers, including several sideshow performers, as winter (and later full time) residents. This collection will feature many of the people and places that made "Gibtown" home to this fascinating industry.

There are a number of small towns, some still identifiable (Sun City, Balm, and Fort Lonesome, are three extant small communities), and some that have long since disappeared in southern Hillsborough County (Remlap, Adamsville, Peru, and Boyette, as examples). This collection will house items from those communities as their histories are important parts of the South Hillsborough County story.

Captain C.H. Davis founded Wimauma in 1902. The town site was located on a 55-mile railroad route from Durant to Manatee County and into Sarasota. Wimauma, a farm-based community, has 6,500 year-round residents, and increases with the farming seasons to 11,000+. Wimauma is truly special because of the vast diversity of its residents and businesses. There are ‘bodegas and cantinas’ along with bakeries, small businesses and several schools. There are three farmworker missions that support and meet the needs of the migrant community. Wimauma is also home to the Wimauma Church of God Camp Meeting and Convention Center, drawing hundreds of visitors.

Gibsonton was a popular winter fishing destination for many carnival and sideshow workers in the 1940s according to Mark Caramanica. It was the only place in the U.S. where the former fire chief was over eight feet tall and the local police chief was a dwarf! Gibtown, as it’s called, was near the winter home for the Ringling Brothers Circus at Tampa, Sarasota and Venice. Wikipedia states that the 2010 census showed there were 14,000+ people living in Gibtown. The original ‘Gibtown Showmen’s Club’ building opened in 1966 and expanded to be the largest Showmen’s Association in America. There are 4500+ members which include foreign countries as well as the United States. Gibsonton was the home of the largest trade show in the carnival business.
The library at USF (University of South Florida) has digitized many of the photos that are located in the Museum and are a part of USF Special Collections. The photos date from the 1800s. USF also has a collection of oral histories from previous residents.

The 5,500 acres tract of land that was to be known as Apollo Beach was first deeded to Paul Dickman in 1920 and used annually for farming and grazing pasture and considered uninhabitable. In the early 1950s, Dickman negotiated the sale of the land to three men from New York: Turner, Dean, and Clark. They renamed the land “Tampa Beach” and construction began on the Flamingo Canal near U.S. 41 and proceeded to Fairway Blvd. In 1957, Francis Corr purchased the land from the N.Y. businessmen who ran out of money. Corr decided the area should be called “La Vida Beach”. Supposedly, in 1958, Corr’s wife Dorothy suggested a new name “Apollo Beach”. This was for the area’s greatest benefit – sunshine. Today Apollo Beach is a thriving waterfront community with year-round boating, fishing, and other water activities. The Big Bend Power Station provides power to the Tampa Bay Area and warm waters that attract manatees and sting rays. The Big Bend Power Station and Manatee Viewing Center are both notable landmarks of Apollo Beach.

In its early days Ruskin was so isolated that you needed a boat to easily travel to Tampa or St. Petersburg, and the trip would take several hours each way. But timber and turpentine were available for construction because prior to 1906 a turpentine factory operated close to the area that Ruskin College was being built. Food was not a problem because the temperate climate and good soil was ideal for growing fruits and vegetables, and artesian wells supplied good drinking water, and the surrounding waters supplied fish, shellfish and fowl. For the rest of its needs, the town organized a cooperative general store.

Ruskin College was named after John Ruskin, an English art critic and social thinker of the late 1800's. In 1910 the plat for Ruskin Florida was filed with the Hillsborough County Courts it included the college, parks, and house lots for the founding families. Many of the streets were originally named after social writers of the era.

Ruskin College continued until World War I, when many young people either went into the armed services or took jobs in the cities and never returned. Dr, Miller died in 1919 and also near this time a fire destroyed most of the college buildings. Although these combined tragedies ended the college and the heyday of the cooperative enterprise, Ruskin survived. In fact, the Ruskin Commongood society operated until the 1960's.