Power

In 1955 Florida Power Corporation bought the northern part of Weedon Island and built a power plant there. The power plant property includes some of the prehistoric mounds, the former Weedon house site, and a 1930s movie studio. The power company used the movie studio as a warehouse until it burned in 1963. The power plant is now Progress Energy's Bartow Power Plant.

Here's a glimpse of the power plant through the mangroves along Gandy Boulevard:

If you were to take a few steps further towards the water and look to the east across Old Tampa Bay, you'd see the Interbay Peninsula, home to South Tampa, Port Tampa, and MacDill Air Force Base.

Squint a bit, and you'll see a very large airplane landing at MacDill AFB.

Today MacDill Air Force Base is home to the 6th Air Mobility Wing, U.S. Central Command, and the headquarters of the U.S. Special Operations Command, along with 51 other Mission Partners. Nearly seventy years ago it was a brand new base, training pilots for World War II. Base commander on December 7, 1941, was General Clarence Tinker, also known as the first Native American to become a Major General in the United States Army. Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma was named in his honor.

Grand Central Airport

In 1929 Fred V. Blair built Grand Central Airport on Weedon Island. In 1931, Eastern Air Transport began flights from this airport, with service to Daytona Beach on Curtiss Kingbirds, and service to New York on Curtiss Condors. The airport closed in the late 1940s, but the remains of the terminal and control tower building are still visible next to Weedon Island Preserve's parking lot.

Building the airport required clearing and leveling large portions of the island. Over the past 60 years gopher tortoises have worked hard to convert the former runway into scrub.















For more information: Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields: Florida: Southern Tampa Area. Includes photos and aerial views of Grand Central Airport.

War Beans

The Castor Bean plant grows quickly and easily in Florida, has been grown commercially here in the past, and is used in Brazil to make biodiesel fuel. Sounds great, sign us all up, the answer for what to do with all that land cleared due to citrus canker -- well, maybe not. The plant is invasive and poisonous, one of its products being ricin. Nonetheless, 90 years ago castor cultivation in Florida was a matter of national concern.

The time was 1917, and the United States had joined World War One. One of the inovations of the Great War was the use of airplanes for military purposes, and castor oil was valued as an aircraft lubricant. Soon the plant was under cultivation in Florida, the southwestern states, and California, with growers guaranteed a price of $3 a bushel. Problems with labor, pests, and transportation lowered yields and raised prices demanded by growers. Production was far below government estimates, and the War Department turned to foreign sources of the oil. American petroleum companies promoted mineral and other oils for use in aircraft.

Soon after fields of castor were planted in Florida, armyworms began marching and munching their way through the foliage. State plant inspectors waged battle armed with dust sprayers full of powdered arsenate of lead, quickly saving that year's crop. The State Plant Board reported:

"In dealing with the emergency created by this outbreak of the army worm the Plant Board was called upon to make rather heavy expenditures. A total of $1,946.85 was expended by the Board, covering traveling expenses of inspectors, telegrams, emergency circulars, dusting machines, poison, etc. The large quantity of castor beans saved from destruction, and therefore made available for the use of the Government, more than justified the expenditure."

The war ended before all problems with massive domestic production of castor oil were resolved. Peacetime demand for the oil much less, and farmers turned to other crops. Castor bean plants are still found along roadside ditches and fields throughout south Florida, where they are considered weeds.

Photograph on page 304 of the 1918 edition of The Overland Monthly: "Human and Physical Elements in a Picturesque and Successful Castor Bean Campaign in Florida. --Herman B. Walker of Miami, and the illuminated Ford in Which He Several times Traversed the East Coast, Calling upon the Farmers to Plant War Beans."
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Sources:

"Castor Beans Grown in Titusville Supplied Oil for World War I Planes." Indian River Journal Volume VI, Number 1 (Spring/Summer 2007), pp. 2-3.

The Quarterly Bulletin of the State Plant Board of Florida, Volume I, 1916-1917. Gainesville: State Plant Board of Florida.

1918 Year Book of the Oil, Paint and Drug Reporter. New York: Oil, Paint and Drug Reporter, 1919.

Peter O. Knight Airport on Davis Islands

One fine evening a week or so ago, I found myself on Davis Islands. So I drove down to the southern tip of the island, where it isn't so much that it's picturesque, as there's always something to see there.


Davis Islands (most people say Davis Island, but it is actually more than one piece of land completely surrounded by water. It's not a big deal whichever version you use.) is a Tampa neighborhood out in Hillsborough Bay. This place started out as a couple of grassy, muddy islands, cleverly named Big and Little Grassy Islands. Then in the 1920s David P. Davis turned these into a Florida Boom Time development, with elaborate Mediterranean Revival buildings and houses. Unfortunately for Davis, the Florida Boom ended, and he found himself in deep, dark financial waters. Soon, he sadly ended up in actual waters, disappearing from a luxury yacht during a Trans-Atlantic voyage.

(History and old photographs of Davis Islands are available on the Davis Islands Civic Association website.)

In the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration built an airport at the southern end of Davis Islands. The airport was named after Peter O. Knight, a prominent Tampa lawyer, who was also very involved with local businesses, most notably the Tampa Electric Company. It was through the electric company that Knight convinced Stone & Webster to invest in Davis Islands when David P. Davis was struggling in the 1920s. The airport included a seaplane basin. After World War II, Drew Field (which had been an Army Air Force training base during the war) became Tampa's new international airport. Peter O. Knight Airport's runways were too short for the newer, larger passenger planes, so it was used by private planes and helicopters.

The airport's original administration building was torn down in the 1960s, and replaced by the current building. Although seaplanes aren't quite as popular anymore, the basin is still there at Davis Islands, only now it's a marina and home to the Davis Island Yacht Club. It's also the location of an extremely popular dog park, which includes a beach for dogs to splash in the bay as cruise ships and tankers glide by on the Port of Tampa's shipping channel.