The First Hundred Years: Clearwater Yacht Club, 1911-2011

The Setting: Clearwater of 1911

Clearwater Yacht Club was born at a time of rapid social and economic change in the Tampa Bay Area in general and in Clearwater in particular. According to Pinellas historian Ralf Reed, in 1840, all of Hillsborough County (which included what is now Pinellas County) had only 452 residents of which 287 were soldiers stationed at Fort Brooke (Dunn, 1974). Clearwater was a sleepy little fishing village with some agriculture (Gleason, 1976). In a the Bay were so plentiful that the stories of them sound like Arabian Nights. During the fall months when the mullet were spawning, they often came into the Bay in such numbers that at low tide, the men could walk out and kick them ashore; the women scooped up aprons full at a time. The roaring noise the fish made often was heard across the bay (Clearwater Woman’s Club, 1917: 3).”

Postcard of Cleveland Street looking west (early 1900s). Courtesy of Heritage Village Archives and Library.

charming document housed in the Heritage Village Archive Library titled “A History of Clearwater,” the members of the Clearwater Woman’s Club of 1917 describe the character of the area a few decades earlier: “Although the people lived in a very primitive way, there were many good things to eat. Deer and wild game abounded, turkeys were easily killed and fish in

Postcard of the Clearwater Public Pier (circa 1902). Courtesy of Heritage Village Archives and Library.

In 1841, the US government built Fort Harrison as a place of rest and recuperation for soldiers fighting in the Seminole Indian War (1835–1842), potentially signaling the end of the isolated existence of the area’s residents. Growth and development in the area, however, continued to be slow until the end of the nineteenth century. Florida became a state in 1845 and five years later, the population of all of the Pinellas Peninsula had increased to only 178 people. Members of the Whitehurst, McMullen, Campbell, Taylor, Meares, Youngblood, Turner, Booth, and Archer families comprised most of the population of the Pinellas Peninsula during the late 1800s. A post office

Chapter 1: In the Beginning 15