TAMPA, Fla. — Over the next month, we will be highlighting the impact Latinos have had on the Bay Area for Hispanic Heritage Month. Vicente Ybor brought an industry to the Bay Area that would eventually turn Tampa from a small fishing village into a large city.
Here is his story, told by historian Rodney Kite-Powell with the Tampa Bay History Center.
“Vicente Martinez Ybor was looking for a place to move his cigar factory from Key West and Havana to somewhere else. Likely in Florida, but possibly Texas or Alabama,” Kite-Powell said.
She also said that having a place to manufacture cigars using Cuban tobacco in the United States was "very important." So Ybor came to Tampa.
"He talked to the board of trade and he ended up buying 40 acres of land just outside of what is now downtown Tampa and what is now Ybor City," he continued. “So, he opened up his first cigar factory, a small wooden factory in 1886, completed the work on his large brick factory the following year, and luckily for him that factory was open when a fire in Key West destroyed his main factory there.”
Kite-Powell stated that Ybor decided not to rebuild the Key West factory after the fire and to try his luck in Tampa instead.
“From that, we had a huge cigar industry that grew; not only in his name’s sake, Ybor City but also in West Tampa, bringing thousands and thousands of Cubans, Spanish and later Sicilian immigrants to Tampa," he said. According to Kite-Powell, this changed the city almost overnight.
Ybor died in 1896 at the age of 78 in Tampa and his remains are in the St. Louis Catholic Cemetery in downtown Tampa. His legacy lives on as the person who brought a major industry to the Bay Area that would soon put Tampa on the map.
Vicente Martinez Ybor is not just Hispanic history but Tampa Bay history.
