The Rise of America's Most Unlikely Boom City: Tampa, Florida

In 1880, Tampa, Florida had just 720 people — fewer than the decade before — and had already voted to dissolve its own city government. Within thirty years, it became one of the wealthiest, most productive, and most cosmopolitan cities in the American South. This is the complete story of how Tampa's cigar industry, the men who built it, and a city that refused to stay dead created one of the most unlikely industrial rises in American history.