On the morning of June 9, 1898, the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, “The Rough Riders,” disembarked from an empty coal train approximately 1 mile east of here and joined 16,000 U.S. Army troops mobilizing in Port Tampa for the invasion of Cuba during the Spanish-American War. Because of a shortage of transport ships and rapidly changing plans, Colonel Leonard Wood, Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, and a small group of cavalrymen quickly made their way to the port and found a chaotic scene that made the orderly loading of troops, equipment, and supplies impossible. Wood identified the empty S.S. Yucatan along the pier and immediately boarded it, then sent Roosevelt to bring the regiment and its equipment on foot to board the ship. Once aboard, the Rough Riders were joined by four companies of the 2nd U.S. Infantry Regiment. Because invasion fleet ships had limited space, almost half of the 30,000 U.S. Army troops in Tampa and approximately 200 Rough Riders were unable to embark and remained in Tampa for the duration of the Cuban campaign.