08/29/2026
Welcome to the second week of Separation Saturdays, a limited series in which we explore why and how Pinellas County (formerly known as West Hillsborough) separated from Hillsborough County. This week’s post will detail the reasons many West Hillsborough residents felt that remaining part of Hillsborough County wasn’t in their best interest.
West Hillsborough residents’ primary incentives to break away from the rest of the county were about proximity, representation, and tax benefit distribution. Before the Gandy Bridge opened in 1924, the only way for Pinellas residents to get to the Hillsborough County seat in Tampa was by boat, which could be dangerous in inclement weather, or over poorly maintained, dirt roads all the way back up the peninsula and then back down the other side. For a St. Petersburg resident, riding or driving to Tampa to conduct vital business was a 45-mile trip and a multi-day commitment. West Hillsborough residents paid 23% of Hillsborough County’s tax revenue despite only representing 17% of the population, due to greater average property values. Despite paying a disproportionate amount of taxes, Pinellas residents felt like they were always the last to benefit from those taxes, with public infrastructure improvements disproportionately favoring Tampa as the county’s seat and population center. In 1911, a bridge was finally installed crossing Long Bayou, at the site of the present-day Seminole Bridge in the Bay Pines area, after years of lobbying by West Hillsborough residents. When the bridge was finally opened, it was so shoddily constructed that it quickly collapsed. For many in Pinellas, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Photograph credit: Political cartoon from Tampa Bay Times, February 28, 1911.
