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You Are Here: Home » Things to Do » Culture » Small Town Charm: Gulfport »
By Herb Hiller
Jan Dutton tells how awhile back she ordered 700 pens for her Small Adventures Book Shop that read, “Our 10th Year.” Someone already in Gulfport when she arrived pointed out it actually had been 11 years. “I thought my feet hurt a lot,” jokes Jan, who with her husband gave up American Samoa for this town of 12,000 serious about its history.
Open to the beach and bay, relaxed and with its yellow and purple shop fronts from hippie times, Gulfport has had its ups and downs. It dates from 1881 after Florida promoter Hamilton Disston paid 25 cents apiece for a million acres and created Disston City here. That flopped. Boomtime brought the sumptuous Rolyat Hotel (the flamboyant developer’s name spelled backwards). Depression shut that until 1954 when the Rolyat became a law school campus.
The sole hotel in town today is the former Bay View (from 1905), rescued in 2002 as the Peninsula Historic Inn & Spa, 11 muted suites of Balinese hardwood furniture, with its acclaimed Six Tables dining room. I stayed at the more colorful Sea Breeze Manor Bed & Breakfast Inn, five rooms facing the beach.
Gulfport retains graceful aspects in its brick streets, wide, grass-divided Beach Boulevard lined by attractive homes that lead to the bay, and a waterfront casino where locals come to dance.
The town is also quirky and fun. People ride their clunker bikes. They introduce their rescue dogs around. TLC Food Mart sells art, an antique shop sells food. When I asked directions to City Hall, a woman told me, “Turn right on Gulf Boulevard, go past the Havana Café, then watch for the sign after Bubbles Laundromat.”
This story is excerpted from The Islas Pinellas, Standout Small Towns, in Florida's Beach, the 2006 Visitor Guide for the St. Petersburg Clearwater area.
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Copyright ©2008 St. Petersburg/Clearwater Area Convention & Visitors Bureau. All rights reserved.