Rattlesnake Curve

In the early 1900s, as the St. Petersburg and Gulf Electric Railway Company planned a streetcar line to connect with the Gulf beaches, it first had to choose a terminus where boats could meet trolleys to carry passengers across Boca Ciega Bay. A survey party led by Walter Williams, whose family later gave its name to the Gulfport pier, examined the coastline and selected a site just west of the small settlement of Disston City, the earlier name of Gulfport. North of that point, the car line made a sharp right turn back toward St. Petersburg, creating this curve. The tracks were laid through sand and streamlets, dense scrub palmetto thickets, and low, wet ground inhabited by many wild creatures, especially rattlesnakes. Rattlesnakes remained a serious hazard into the 1940s, when the Gulfport Fire Department periodically burned large tracts of land near Gulfport Elementary School to destroy nests.

Gulfport, Florida · United States