For 10,000 years, Indians hunted the prairies and fished the waters of what later became Pass-A-Grille. The last group of Native Americans to settle in the Pinellas County area were the Tocobagas around 1000-1700 A.D. Europeans first visited this area in 1528, when the Spanish explorer Panfilo de Narvaez anchored off Pass-A-Grille Pass. Afterwards, the island was used as a campground for fishermen to obtain fresh water and grill their catch. According to legend, Pass-A-Grille derives its name from the French Passe aux Grilleurs. In 1857, John Gomez, self-styled "last of the pirates," began bringing excursionists here from Tampa, giving the area the distinction of perhaps being the oldest resort on Central Florida's West Coast. Zephaniah Phillips, the first homesteader, settled here in 1886, and by the turn of the century Pass-A-Grille had its first hotel and a ferry boat service from what is now Gulfport. The town of Pass-A-Grille Beach was incorporated into the city of St. Petersburg Beach in 1957, and in 1989 a section of Passe-A-Grill was declared a National Historic District.