From "The Wonder Town" to "Eden on the Gulf"

Clearwater was not the only booming town. So were Tarpon Springs, Oldsmar, Safety Harbor, Dunedin, and other Pinellas cities.

Tarpon Springs was already known in the 1920s as the “Sponge Capital of the World.” John K. Cheney is credited with first bringing sponge divers to Tarpon Springs from Key West around 1905.

Oldsmar boldly advertised itself with a scene of bathing beauties cavorting between palm trees and heralding the town as the “suburb of the two cities-Tampa and St. Petersburg.” It was also called “the wonder town of Pinellas.”

Hampton Dunn’s pictorial history reports that “Boom-Town Oldsmar staged barbecues and orchestral concerts across from the Wayside Inn (sometimes known as the Olds Tavern) in mid-winter to attract large crowds of Northerners interested in investing in the revived community.” A photo in Dunn’s Yesterday’s Clearwater shows large crowds in top coats lined up for the food.

Activity in Safety Harbor—once known as Espiritu Santo, or Spring of the Holy Spirit—centered on the famed mineral springs which bubbled below the lobby of the spas there. With health-seekers flocking to the town in search of vitality, it became known as “the health giving city,” a place “where the Healing Waters flow.” And after the remarkable cure there of the paralysis of a Dr. Green, some called it “Green Spring.”

With each town in the glory days of the 1920 claiming a descriptive name for itself, Dunedin, once called Jonesboro, was no exception. Dunedin pointed to its lush foliage and dubbed itself the “Eden on the Gulf.”