Happy Birthday, Plant City!

As Plant City celebrates its 139th anniversary of being incorporated as a city, we look back from where we were to where we are today.
Plant City gained its spot on the travel maps when Henry Bradley Plant brought his South Florida Railroad and 1883 extension into the Central Florida area known as Ichepucksassa or Hichipucksassa.
By 1885, Plant City, with a population of three hundred, had thirteen stores, two churches (Baptist and Methodist), and an academy known as Shiloh.
At one time, our pace was a little slower. Streets and sidewalks were unpaved; the gathering place to share and learn the local community news was wooden, and no red light was in sight.
Progress followed, and on January 15, 1914, the first brick streets were laid in Plant City; dial phone service came to Plant City in 1923, and neighborhood subdivisions began to pop up away from the downtown core.
Leap forward to today’s fast-paced world, where we are embracing Artificial Intelligence (AI) and traveling the I-4 corridor to board the Brightline train to Miami and beyond.
Progress continues to embrace our once-small community, and change envelops new beginnings that will lead us to a better future. After all, where would we be today without electricity and telephones?