Tampa
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Tampa. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a city of Florida. It is situated at the mouth of Hillsborough River, at the head of Tampa Bay, about twenty-nine miles from the open Gulf of Mexico. The harbor is the best on the western coast of Florida. There are regular steamer connections with Mobile, New Orleans , and Galveston, and other Gulf ports, as well as with Havana, New York , and other Atlantic ports. Phosphate, cedar lumber, pitch, and turpentine are shipped in large quantities. Tampa is noted for the manufacture of cigars. There are over 100 concerns and nearly 5,000 workmen employed in the manufacture of tobacco. The tobacco used in the factories is chiefly Cuban. Cuban workmen are employed in the factories. Historically Tampa is the landing place of Narvaez. The ill-fated expedition of De Soto, which resulted in the discovery of the Mississippi and the explorer's death, it may be remembered, set out from Tampa Bay. The present population of the city, including suburbs, is over 30,000.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a city and county-seat of Hillsboro co., Fla.; on Hillsboro river, Tampa Bay, and the Atlantic Coast Line, Seaboard Air Line and Tampa Northern railroads; 30 miles E. of the Gulf of Mexico. It is in a lemon and orange growing region, and is one of the favorite health resorts of Florida. It contains many hotels, the Convent of Holy Names, Female Seminary, waterworks, street railroad and electric light plants, National banks, and several daily, weekly, and monthly periodicals. Its chief industry is the manufacture of cigars. During the Spanish-American War Tampa was one of the great mobilization camps. Pop. (1910) 37,782; (1920) 51,608.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's recorded 51,608 residents in 1920, Tampa was a cigar town: Aiton's counted nearly 5,000 workers rolling Cuban leaf in more than 100 factories. Hand rolling collapsed under mechanization, the Depression and the later embargo on Cuban tobacco, and Ybor City, once the heart of the trade, is now a preserved historic district of restaurants and bars rather than a factory quarter. The city itself holds close to 400,000 people today, within a Tampa Bay metropolitan area of roughly three million, and its largest institutions are ones neither entry could have named: MacDill Air Force Base, opened in 1941 and home to the headquarters of U.S. Central Command, and a port that remains Florida's busiest by tonnage, still shipping the phosphate Aiton's mentioned. Even the county's name has settled differently: Collier's Hillsboro is now spelled Hillsborough.
Written for this edition, 2026.