It wasn’t lost. We just weren’t sharing.
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This Saturday morning I was both bit by the nostalgia bug and feeling the need to go on a mind clearing drive. When it’s only the drive I’m craving I’ll hit the twisties in Lutz or the long empty stretches in northern Pasco or Hernando. Once or twice a year, though, I feel the need to go check in with good old Ruskin and my old haunts in south Hillsborough County.
It’s not like I ever really left. I still live in the Tampa Bay Area. My work keeps me in or close to downtown and most of other needs I have are filled locally as well. Even though it’s only a short drive down the interstate I never need to go to Ruskin – so I rarely do.
Ever since the discovery – made by the major cookie-cutter homebuilders about eight years ago – that Ruskin is, in fact, on Tampa Bay and actually has both modern and usable beach and boating access, the area has been billed as “SouthShore.” That’s cute and everything but when I was growing up there all anybody on the outside knew about us was that we grew the best tomatoes. We were known as “Little Mexico,” “The Big Tomato” and “The Sticks” – all said quite lovingly, I’m sure. Yeah, people may have heard that Apollo Beach was a half way civilized place to live if you owned a boat (it’s population over tripled from almost-nothing to almost-four-thousand between 1970 and 1980 – talk about a boom!) but with Gibsonton and the then widespread fear of bearded ladies and people that owned carnival rides laying in between Tampa and “SouthShore,” folks stayed north or north and east. This made Brandon and Valrico the beautiful, thriving communities they are today. Urban sprawl is considered appealing these days, I think, right? Positive press about the Lobster Boy family and the debunking of myths surrounding carnies along with the aforementioned discovery of salt water and and undeveloped (read: agricultural) land both allayed fears and piqued interest in the area.
Now the sprawl continues southward.
When I entered sixth grade I was bussed to a school north of Gibsonton/Riverview in an area called Progress Village. I’m not at all bitter about having been sent to a school exactly twenty miles away from where I lived. I did kind of live “out in the country.” This year of busing really began my real-life education into the type of social experimentation by “the haves” that used to be called “the projects.” I didn’t exactly grow up in an affluent area but it had it’s pockets of wealth and decadence. A lot of my friends lived in labor camps but a few also lived on large pieces of land with horses or in homes along that Bay we thought we were hiding. The year – my eleventh year of life – I spent at Progress was a year full of eye opening experiences for me. I now had friends that lived a new kind of poverty and, also, friends that lived in Bloomingdale. I drove through both areas on Saturday morning. They are still as different as night and day even though they are only really separated by a highway intersection. Little remarkable development has happened in either area except for the fact that some one actually figured out how to cram even more subdivisions into the latter.
On this particular drive I made my way, first, south along US 301 through Riverview and then, later, on my way back home, north on US 41 through Gibsonton. Riverview does, in fact, have a river running through it – the Alafia. When I was young Riverview was already a popular place to live in south Hillsborough county and lots of people made their home along the banks of the river the area was named for. There was, also, the first “master planned” community not targeted at people over 55 I’d ever seen – Summerfield. As an adult I realize that this is certainly not the case but, as a child, I thought everyone that lived in those little pastel colored concrete boxes with attached garages was rich! I think it was the fact that they had community pools, golf courses and sprinklers in their yards – or maybe that there were other kids to play with on every single street. Now Riverview is teaming with communities like this. Riverview’s farming industry was already dying by the time I was growing up in my farming family in Ruskin so the seemingly empty land there was actually unused. The fiscally sensitive side of my brain can certainly see why that barren land along US 301 was bought up and filled with tenth-of-an-acre pastel plantations but the rest of me – a product of that area – has no idea why anyone would want to live in a place called Riverview when you’ve no chance of viewing a river. I don’t know if I’d actually consider this “trivia” – but I enjoy this little blurb about “two lane roads” and the “rural setting” that someone included on Riverview’s Wikipedia entry.
Gibsonton, aside from smelling like phosphate mines, actually makes more sense to me for development like this. The area along US 41 is actually closer to the water and, with some help, decent beach and boating access could be achieved. We’d just have to knock down a phosphate mound or two which I’m sure couldn’t be that hard! The drive to downtown along US 41 is also a pretty easy one. That being said, Gibsonton has seen a few new planned communities pop up – but nothing like Riverview. Driving through Gibsonton now is pretty much like it was when I was a kid.
So there weren’t any huge shocks for most of my ride – which is nice. I got choked up a few times. I’m a sap. Loads of memories come flooding back whenever I do this and that is, without a doubt, the most enjoyable part of being able to take this drive.
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Finally – the lost river.
South of Ruskin proper (yes, this exists, smart ass) is Gulf City – presumably (by me) so named because it’s near the southernmost part of the Bay where the line between it and the Gulf of Mexico become blurred. Despite what the current version of the Wikipedia article tells you it is neither 40 miles south of Tampa nor abandoned. While historical Gulf City may have been forgotten and made into part of unincorporated Hillsborough County – the true and actual site is very much reachable by road. In fact, US 41 goes right over the Little Manatee river and leads right up to Tampa. Seriously – who would say there wasn’t a bridge over the Little Manatee River? Any point other than that can be reached on foot or by boat.
So, it’s no longer a “city.” That doesn’t mean it no longer exists. I love how, when something becomes “history,” it somehow ceases to be real.
Gulf City Road looks nearly the same as it did when I was kid with a few glaring differences. There are a few newer homes lining the (my!) river and there are some signs promising upscale housing communities along as-of-yet undredged canals but with the recent downturn in the housing market, I doubt we’ll see those plans come to fruition any time soon. The farm land my father worked is now seemingly – like historical Gulf City – abandoned. The giant warehouse and cooling facility once used for his crops is in desperate need of attention – as is the house I grew up in.
My river is still there, though some are claiming it was lost.
At one point, as you attempt to head west towards the Bay, Gulf City Road quickly turns you south. Not much farther and it’s and sharp west facing turn, again and back south shortly thereafter. This area has been known for quite some time as a place that has provided an outstanding look back in time for both paleontologists and regular old kids like me. Amazing fossils and bits of evolutionary evidence have been pulled from the Liesey Shell Pit (Caloosa Shell Corporation) - a place few who aren’t in the know would suspect to find along a isolated trail along a river and in the swampland. Now, though, and for the past few years there are signs on either side of that set of turns – signs that read “Lost River Preserve.”
Now, these signs and this community idea are all fair, I suppose. Mr. Leisey, whom I do not know but assume I met at some point in my childhood, and his company of Caloosa Shell have every right to do whatever they wish with the land. Things change, childhood “hiking” trails disappear, homes are built, man-made lakes emerge and “new” areas as discovered as suitable places to live. Everyone has to grow-up, suck-it-up and give-up on certain fantasies of recapturing our youth.
Not just me, I know. Everyone.
“Lost River,” though?
She was never lost – not to me.
I get it. The name could be pulled forth from a million different allusions – especially those involving archaeological finds at a shell pit. All I keep thinking about, though, is my river and this whole new “SouthShore” thing and emotion takes hold. The name makes me think that the banks of my river may have forgotten me or that, worse, she thinks I forgot her. Perhaps it’s that I feel lost, myself. I’ve disappeared into the sprawl of the concrete and attached garages and all of those things that formed my character and identity are being discovered by other people who will built 2500 sq ft-minimum homes on them.
I’m sure the place that I live is on top some else’s lost river – which only makes me feel worse because I don’t even like the place I live. My house is very nice and the area is safe, clean, gated and pastel with golf courses and community pools – I even live on a (man-made) lake. It’s not home, though, and even though home is only a short drive down I75 – that’s not mine.
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There’s a light at Gulf City Rd and US 41 now. That always strikes me as strange because while the plan was for more people to end up living there, they never really showed up. As I started to head back north, right before the bridge that does, in fact, exist over the Little Manatee River, I saw a car pull over on the shoulder and three people get out and grab fishing poles and nets. I was 25 minutes south of downtown and in the 19th largest MSA in the United States yet, still, there’s a river that quaint winding through one of it’s suburbs.
I’m glad I didn’t wander too far from home. I’m glad I can still take that drive.
(Apologies and one intentional allusion to Neil Diamond)
