In the early days of Tampa, you could stand on the banks of the Hillsborough River and if the wind was blowing just right, you might smell the thick aroma of cedar permeating the air.  As cigar factories from Palmetto Beach to West Tampa hummed with workers, a number of ancillary businesses sprouted to support the booming industry. Restaurants and boarding houses kept workers fed and housed. While other businesses manufactured equipment and tools necessary to produce quality hand-rolled cigars.

Check out the Firefighters Museum in downtown Tampa. Undoubtedly, fire shapes communities and Tampa is no exception. In 1908, block upon block in Ybor City were destroyed. The new museum, in the old #1 Fire Station on Zack Street, explores the devastating effects of fire on communities while stressing safety and preparedness.

Manny Leto recounts the harrowing tale of his face-to-face sit down with Tampa's Cigar City Mafia. All names have been changed to protect the innocent-and the guilty.

The story of  Ybor City’s Broadway Bakery, Manny Leto writes about La Joven Francesca Bakery, once a cornerstone in the Ybor City neighborhood. Today this same structure is the Ybor State Museum, a national landmark.

Cigar City Magazine is fast becoming the go-to source for new and exciting Ybor City tours!

It's all the rage in newspapers like the St. Petersburg Times and The Tampa Tribune's Friday Extra and is featured on sites like TBO.com, as well as most of our local TV stations! It’s “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” tours in historic Ybor City, Florida.

With the closing of Hav-A-Tampa Cigar Company, another chapter in our city's cigar history comes to a close. J.C. Newman, makers of Cuesta-Rey Cigars among other brands, becomes the last remaining Tampa cigar company to produce cigars here.

Back in 1935, with cigar production on the wane, industry leaders organized The Cigar Industry Golden Jubilee, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the cigar industry’s founding in 1885. Over the course of four days, thousands of people turned out to celebrate Tampa’s legacy as the “Cigar City.” We’ll look at photos documenting the auspicious occasion, which boasted the first Verbena–a traditional Spanish festival–ever held in the United States. These sometimes campy and always endearing photos from the 1935 event and subsequent years remind us that Tampa has never shied away from a good parade.

Amid the gleeful chatter I read the headline loudly, “‘River of Beer, Running Out of Sewer, Dipped Up by Kids and Sold for a Nickel Per Drink!’”

In this artilce on West Tampa, Ed Turanchik notes that the historic neighborhood on the west side of the Hillsborough River has “good bones.” Turanchik was talking about the physical layout of West Tampa, its uninterrupted street grid, its abundant housing stock, its central location. All of these factors are part of the reason why West Tampa has received so much attention and private investment of late.

When Floridians voted for and approved a state lottery system in 1986, it must have seemed like déjà vu to the people of Tampa. The government-sanctioned Florida Lotto, with its little white numbered balls, is strikingly similar to another game of chance, one responsible for gangland shootings and rampant corruption. The game was bolita and for over 60 years Tampa’s criminal underworld battled for control of the illegal lottery and its profits.