General Info
When Europeans first reached the Pinellas peninsula, the Tampa Bay area was inhabited by people of the Safety Harbor culture. There were various chiefdoms in the Safety Harbor cultural region. The Toco baga, who resided at the Safety Harbor location overlooking the bay,built a village and a huge temple mound there, were one known chiefdom in what is now Pinellas County. The contemporary location is preserved and accessible as a part of Philippe Park in the County.
The Pinellas peninsula (formerly called West Hillsborough) and a large portion of west central Florida were formed as Hillsborough County in 1834. The very next year, Odet Philippe, a French Huguenot from Charleston, South Carolina, constructed a plantation close to the location of the Tocobaga town at Safety Harbor, making him the first permanent non-native resident of the peninsula. Philippe was the one who originally brought cigar-making and citrus farming to Florida.
The most current census has the population of Pinellas County at 959,107. Making it the most densely populated county in the state as well as the 7th most populous.
