>>This program is brough to you in part by the Paul B.

Hunter and Constance D. Hunter Charitable Foundation a proud partner of WUCF, and the Central Florid Community.

>>Up next on this edition of Florida Road Trip... >>And that's what I want for people is to come lear about a little piece of history in a town that even quite a few of our citizens say did not know was here.

>>We journey back in time and see how some of the early residents on Florida's west coast lived.

Plus... >>It's such a great place to come and escape and just experience nature.

>>We hit the trails where Florida's ecosystem is on display.

Then... >>We had two gentlemen that I always say that if it wasn't for their coconuts, their heads, that it wouldn't really happen, right?

>>We learn what brought such a large portion of the Greek population to Tampa Bay.

Buckle up.

Florida Road Trip is back on the road and dropping anchor in Tarpon Springs.

♪♪ Hi there and welcome to this edition of Florida Road Trip.

I'm your host, Scott Fais.

We're back in the Tampa Bay area, this time exploring Tarpon Springs.

Here, while strolling the docks, you can find the most perfect of sponges or sit down to some fine Greek cuisine.

Yet Tarpon Springs history awaits just beneath the surface.

>>We have proof of people being here for almost 2,000 years before we started history and they were settling along the Anclote River area, also near what's now known as Lake Tarpon in the springs and bayous around Tarpon Springs.

There's some artifacts that came from as early as 500 B.C.

First people that came into this area actually settled in the north bank of the Anclote River.

It was after the Civil War.

And then later on, oh, I think it was about 1876.

A.W.

Ormond came from South Carolina with his teenage daughter Mary, and they settled near the Spring Bayou area and they were living here for about a year.

And then a young man sailed into the bayou in his sloop.

Joshua Boyer.

And the story goes that he and Mary ended up getting married the following year.

Mary Ormond, she was known as a person that named Tarpon Springs, and we have proof of that in a way, from Joshua Boyer's memoirs that he wrote many years ago.

And he talked about his wife sitting there watching the waters, the bayou, and saying, oh, look, there's tarpon swimming in the bayou.

And so it became known as Tarpon Springs.

>>The first big growth spurt to the area came when Hamilton Disston purchased 4 million acres for just $0.25 an acre.

>>Hamilton Disston sent people here, which was Anson P.K.

Safford.

There was a man named John Walton that came to town to help survey.

So there were quite a few other people that came to help develop the town.

>>Safford became president of the Lake Butler Village Company, where it was his job to divide up the land and then encourage people to move here and buy their own plots.

>>They were talking about it being like a health resort because it was s I guess the sun, the fresh air, all the other different things that made up Tarpon Springs.

>>One of those people who started buying land from the Lake Butler Village Company was John King Chaney.

>>He realized that there was a have to be more than just the winter resort people that came to keep this whole community functioning properly.

And he saw that people were ou sponging in the Gulf of Mexico.

John Chaney actually hired a man that was Greek, named John Cocoris.

So he convinced John Chaney to finance, bringing over some of the people that sponged from the Greek islands.

>>This partnership led to a boom in the Greek population and the sponging industry.

>>But there was a lot of money in sponges and some of the African-Americans actually had come from the Bahamas and already had been trained in how to retrieve the sponges.

>>To my knowledge, the first African-American settled in Tarpon Springs in the mid 1800s.

They primarily came to Tarpon Springs because of the citrus industry and also because of the sponging industry.

And the sponge industry was very prosperous in Key West, Florida, and the Bahamas, where they were diving for sponges there and heard about just how prosperous it was in the Tarpon Springs area.

So they moved their families to Tarpon from Key West and in the Bahamas.

>>The African-American population here was certainly well needed because they needed people to be able to build the houses, to wash the clothes.

I mean, there were just so many jobs that they had for this resort community that they had built here.

>>The different cultures worked together all to build Tarpon Springs into what it is today.

>>Even through integration periods, things were not as term - as much of a turmoil here as they were in other areas because the people worked together.

And I think that's what makes Tarpon unique.

>>While strolling the sponge docks, you can still see the city' ties to Greek culture and fact.

There's an annual tradition not far from here that dates back all the way to 1906.

Spring Bayou is the focal point here in town, and it was a perfect place for the Greek Orthodox Church to conduct the epiphany celebration.

>>Each January, 30 to 50 young men, ages 16 to 18, will dive into the bayou to retrieve a cross while a woman releases a dove as a celebration to the baptism of Christ.

>>And the idea of the dove is that they release it to the heavens and the heavens open.

And at that time is when they throw the cross, which used to be a gold cross into the bayou for the young men to retrieve and whoever is the retrieve would be blessed for that year.

>>So she mentioned it used to be a gold cross.

That's because one year no one retrieved the cross and it's believed to still be laying on the bottom and that deep, deep spring.

>>But after the gold cross was lost, they started making wood crosses.

And that's what they use today.

>>Here's something you may not have known.

Spring Bayou is connected to Lake Tarpon.

That's three miles away.

>>There's an underground waterway.

And years ago, when the tide would come in, the water would rush over to Lake Tarpon, and we'd have saltwater in Lake Tarpon, and then it would come back the other direction.

When the tide goes out, the water come rushing back.

And we used to have the fountain in the - in the bayou.

Years ago, in the 1920s, it was it would spout u when the water would come back.

In fact, before the bayou was actually named Spring Bayou, it was called the Boiling Spring because of the turmoil in the water of it coming and going.

So most people don't know that.

Years later, in the 1960s, they actually plugged at Lake Tarpon, plugged the area where the water came through so no more saltwater would get into Lake Tarpon.

>>The Tarpon Springs Area Historical Society features artifacts from every part of the community, from Greek life in the arts to medical and the railroad.

In fact, the Historical Society is located inside the old train depot and free to visit.

>>We have a lot on display.

We really do.

♪♪ >>The sponge docks are one of the most recognizable areas of Tarpon Springs.

Here you'll find boats, restaurants and shops.

Yet it's these docks that were the central hub of the sponging industry.

>>We had two gentlemen that I always say that if it wasn't for their coconuts, their heads that it wouldn't really happen.

Right.

John King Chaney.

He was in the sponging industry since the 1850s.

Then we also had John Michael Cocoris.

He was also involved in sponging since the late 1800s.

So they got together and in 1901 they found all these sponge beds because their nets were being foiled and realized "Wow all these sponges are right here!"

you know?

So they got together and Cocoris said, hey, you know what?

I'm from the islands.

We know this.

We got this, you know.

So he goes "I'm gonna go bring a whole bunch of people."

So they brought over about 500 Greeks.

>>To better understand how big of an impact the Greeks made on the sponging industry in Tarpon, let's first look at how the sponging industry evolved in Greece.

>>The Greeks have been sponging for thousands of years.

You know, for the longest time it was what we call naked diving, where the diver would hold on to a flat stone.

We call a bell stone, and they would dive down holding that stone.

The stone had a hole in one end with a rope on it.

They'd go down.

They'd let go of the stone.

The person on the on the dinghy above would pull the stone back.

The diver would have a collection bag and he would pick as many sponge as he could on a single breath and go up.

>>The next evolution in harvesting sponges was by hooking them.

>>You'd look through a glass bottom bucket and would be able to take a long pole, and she cited a sponge and be able to hook it and bring it up.

And it was a very cumbersome method of sponging.

>>The black spongers did not dive for the sponges, which is kind of like a comparison between the Greeks and the non Greeks.

But they were able to do wha was called hooking the sponges, and that was how they gathered the sponges in the early days.

>>The arrival of the Greeks in Florida revolutionized sponging and Tarpon Springs.

>>The Greeks came out, brought over their technology, the diving equipment, using the hard hat.

And that sort of revolutionized the industry in the respect of how much you could harvest, but also turned it into a profitable commercial enterprise.

And so that's how the Greeks arrived.

And and that's sort of how it evolved.

>>The hard hat method, you can go a lot deeper.

You can go to 30 or 40 feet, you can get a lot of sponges.

And it was a much better sponge.

There were bigger the deeper they were.

And it also was a much easier way to collect sponges.

It was the beginning of that industry and then the culture.

>>We actually have 125 acres is the actual sponge docks district.

Also the Greeks, once they got here, they literally kept their traditions.

The town really embraced us.

Greeks are, you know, we're like My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

It was great because the community is what allowed us to thrive.

>>Here at the sponge exchange, you'll find shops and cafes.

But that wasn't the initial purpose to this historic area.

>>There's no shops.

It was just warehouses.

And the ground was like the dirt that you can almost brush off and all our events and everything were right here in this sponge exchange.

But it was just great because they had an area finally, right, the divers to be able to bring their bounty and say, hey, here it is, you know, and the buyers would be able to come by and have one area where everyone was collectively.

>>Krisula's grandfather was sponge diver in Tarpon Springs.

Today, her grandfather's boat is on display at the center of the exchange.

>>After the invention of the synthetic sponge, of course, people, you know, the sponge isn't in as much demand, but it is still superior to the synthetic sponge.

>>We're still preserving whatever we can, trying to preserve the sponging industry.

♪♪ >>One of the original developer of this area was Anson Safford, and this was the house he built back in 1883.

Today, the home is on the National Registry of Historic Places.

Step across the threshold and you'll find yourself in the 19th century.

>>This was just built as a dog trot style cabin.

So what that means is that it's two smaller buildings connected in the middle by a breezeway.

The name comes from having the dog able to trot through the house, you know, outside to the - running around the porch and then coming back inside when it when needed.

>>A few years later, his family joined him and then they quickly discovered there wasn't enough space for everyone.

>>Due to that, they had to build upwards.

So now that' when the second floor comes in.

That was done by ripping the roof off of this building, lifting it up, then building the second floor around it, and then blowing the roof back down.

Then followed by that was the wraparound porch.

The minute you head upstairs it is a drastic change from the wood paneling you see around here.

There is plaster everywhere.

It's more o what a home would be as opposed to the cabin that he was initially just staying in short term.

>>Anson lived in the house until the time he passed away in the early 1890s from an illness.

Besides the architecture, you'll find items of the past.

Each will give you an up close look at what it was like during this period in time.

>>Anson Safford's office itself has his chess set from when he used to play with the ministe from the church down the street very frequently, as well as some other supplies, newspapers of the time, and then going upstairs you see furniture, clothing, just personal items that show off what it was to live in this time and kind of what you needed to live in this time.

We have one piece of a mannequin wearing a white dress, very modest, but it's very thin material perforated everywhere because this was Florida and it wasn't as hot, but you still needed to be able to breathe through your material.

>>Anson Safford and Hamilton Disston were friends and with the distant land purchase, Hamilton invited his friend to move to Tarpon Springs.

>>After living in Tarpon for a little while, getting everything incorporated built.

He would then go on to open the first bank in Tarpon and have the Tarpon Inn built.

>>He played an essential role in the development of Tarpon, but he also had a lot of experience making positive changes in his communities while serving as the governor of Arizona.

>>His time in Arizona as governor.

His main focus was schools and education for children.

He valued that above all else because he did not have, not the best education just strictly just due to the area where they lived.

Schooling only went so far, so he wanted schools for children of any color, creed, even nationality, because they were close to Mexico.

So even kids across the border could come to these schools and learn from him.

>>Remember how the house was expanded to fit Anson's family that moved down to Tarpon Springs?

Well, one of those family members was his sister, Mary Jane, who was also one of the first female doctors in the state of Florida.

>>Sh starts off as a civil war nurse strictly by volunteering an then working her way into that.

She tirelessly works around the clock to help these gentlemen getting off the battlefield, treating and even attending to just any sort of needs that they had, just physica or just exhaustion emotionally.

She then goes to New York Medical College for Women, one of the only institutions at the time that was teaching wome to be doctors, learns medicine, then goes off to Austria, learns surgery.

She becomes the first woman to perform an ovariotomy.

And then takes all of that, comes back to the United States and is a practicing doctor.

She then continues to go teach at Boston University of Medicine, and she is teaching to women's diseases at the time and is doing that up until she just starts to come down with the sickness and looks down to Tarpon.

But even that is her becoming one of the first female doctors in Florida, let alone Tarpon Springs.

And I'm told that she also made her house calls by boat when she was down there, which is just amazing.

>>She was also an advocate for women's suffrage and women's health.

>>She wrote a book named Health and Strength Papers for Girls that was dedicated to writing about getting corsets off women getting girls out and active.

At the time, they they were not.

There was an epidemic of a lot of young girls dying because Vitamin D deficiencies are they're just physically weaker.

And ill because they were not getting out, playing, building the immune system and the muscles that kids do by just being kids.

>>During the tour of the Safford House, you'll find one of Dr. Safford's jackets upstairs.

Tarpon Springs prides itself on preserving its history, and the Sanford house is just one example of it.

>>I believe what makes Tarpon Springs so unique is that we are a living relic.

And by that, I mean we have a lot of people very invested in keeping not only the history of the town, but just the culture of what brought the town alive.

♪♪ >>When the sponge divers from Greece arrived here in Tarpon Springs, they brought their dive helmet technology with them, forever changing the industry.

Today, service supplied helmets are used.

However, there's one man here in Tarpon Springs who's honoring the past by recreating those helmets used more than a century ago.

>>The design has not changed since the mid 1800s.

These helmets literally are the same.

Copper, brass, leather seals and glass quarter inch glass.

The same exact thing that has been produced for over 150 years now.

Even though a divers no longer use it, what I do is completely functional.

>>You can tell Nicholas takes a lot of pride in his work.

It's a skill passed down from his grandfather, who used to make these helmets in Tarpon during a time when they were indeed used for sponging.

>>I'd watch my grandfather work.

I would go get a piece of a steel rod.

And this grinder that's right here next to me.

I'd turn it on and make spear make a point on the on the steel rod, much like the sponge hooks I'm working on right now.

As I got older, he'd have me do other things.

When I was nine, ten years old, he'd have me stand at our large lathe and I'd have my hands on the dials and he would put his hands on my hands and turn my hands so that I could feel what it was like to cut metal.

And so that's how I learned.

>>His grandfather is born in Greece, but his family moved to Istanbul, and that's where he started his training as a machinist.

>>By the time he was 21, 22 years old, he was actually managing one of those shipyards where they built ocean liners and freighters.

When I say shipyards, I'm talking about very, you know, huge shipyards and the steam engines that he would design and the stories that he would tell me, similar to when you see the movie Titanic, these steam engines that are two or three stories high.

Nicholas' grandfather decided to leave Turkey after receiving a letter from his family who had already relocated to Tarpon Springs.

>>They needed someone with my grandfather's skill set to come here to Tarpon Springs because of the flourishing sponge industry at the time.

What he did was anything that wasn't wood on a boat.

>>But he wasn't making the helmets just yet.

>>The helmets were something that he knew how to do.

And just from looking at it and he was friends with the helmet maker had come just before my grandfather, who was actually all he did was make helmets.

>>After the gentlemen passed, Nicholas' grandfather stepped in to fill the void.

But he wanted to put his own take on the helmets.

So he went out and put the helmet on and went out diving in it, you know, just to see what it was like and then had a better understanding of what he wanted to do.

>>Every piece of the helmet has to be made.

You can't just buy these parts in the store and each one takes 350 hours to complete.

>>I try and really put out something that's just superior to anything out there to honor my grandfather.

He was the best and had the highest standards, so I definitely try to emulate that.

♪♪ >>The largest remaining natural area in Pinellas County is the Brooker Creek Preserve.

Now, you may have had somebody say, oh, I've heard of that park.

But once you spent some time here, you'll know the difference between a park and a preserve.

>>I always tell people, if you were to look at Pinellas County on the map, we're like the only green that you see on the map.

We like to stress that there is a difference between a park and a preserve.

Parks are more for people, preserves are more for the wildlife and flora and fauna that we have here.

So while we do have hiking trails and things like that, the majority of the preserve, you'll see trails only make up a tiny, tiny portion.

The rest has to remain natural to support the natural resources that we have here.

>>I got to be honest with you.

I think I'm a better boater and beachgoer than I am a hiker.

And out here you'll find 8,700 acres.

Part of the fear comes from what happens if you get lost?

Well, with trails that are this well marked, that's just not a problem.

>>You stay on the trail, you you will not get lost.

And yeah, there's different loops.

So depending how far you want to go, you can do a shorter loop or a little bit longer loop.

And then there's the longest loop that we have that's about four miles long.

>>We have a separate trail system that not a lot of people know about off Laura Lane.

It's called The Friends Trail.

That's just shy of two miles long.

And then we also have equestrian trails through the preserve as well.

>>There's plenty of educational opportunities at the preserve from trail signs to an indoor education center.

>>We have a few interpretive trail signs along our education center trail, hence the name.

And basically it showcases the different plants and animals, some of the common ones that you might see in that particular ecosystem.

It talks about what ecosystem you are in right now.

And then one of the really cool things I like about our signs is that it kinda asks like a research question.

It gets you thinking as an individual, and then it also highlights some actions that you can do at home to help support and protect the environment too.

So it's a full learning experience.

>>As you hike, watch where you step.

You might just land on a piece of history from the people that left the area in the late 17th century.

>>We do find evidence of like spear points and things like that.

Hunting evidence from the Tocobaga Indians.

So that is definitely something that people continue to find, there have been archeologists doing research in the past here.

But I would say maybe a couple of years ago I was just walking along and I said, Oh, look, it's a rock and kicked it up.

And it was a spear point.

>>Booker Creek Preserve is peaceful and educational, but the property play a vital role in Pinellas County and is essential for the rest of the state.

We hear the term watershed a lot, and it's kind of an unknown term for a lot of people.

So it's basically an area of land where any water that fall within a defined area will flow for us, for the Booker Creek Preserve will flow into Booker Creek if it doesn't evaporate along the way.

So the preserve itsel falling within the Booker Creek watershed is critical for flood storage.

So Pinellas County is the most densely populated county in the state.

We have homes all surrounding the preserve, and if we didn't have the preserve right, that water has to go somewhere.

And so it would either be flooding homes or we'd have to create some significant infrastructure to handle that.

So it's critical for flood storage.

It also helps slow the flow of water to allow it to infiltrate, percolate and recharge our aquifer, which is the groundwater where we get a lot of our drinking water from.

And then also all these plants that we have here at the preserve helped to filter out a lot of pollutants as well.

So it's a critical, critical resource that we have here.

>>There is no entrance fee to the preserve and it's open every day of the week except for the day afte Thanksgiving and Christmas Day.

>>People can come go on a self-guided hike whenever they want.

Trails are flooded or not.

You can walk right through.

Have a fun experience that way.

>>Whethe it's exploring the sponge docks immersing yourself in the traditions of the Greek community, or just going for a quiet stroll, there is something for everyone in Tarpon Springs.

Thanks for joining us for this edition of Florida Road Trip.

I'm Scott Fais.

I look forward to inviting you on our next cruise through Florida history.

Until then, safe travels, everyone.

♪♪ >>This program is brough to you in part by the Paul B.

Hunter and Constance D. Hunter Charitable Foundation, a proud partner of WUCF and th Central Florida Community.