Early history Native settlement The earliest known residents of Pasco County were the Timucuans
Native American tribe who lived on the land in the early 1200s. Settlers in Florida brought diseases to the area though, wiping out the tribe.
Exploration In the 1500s,
Spanish explorers came into the Florida region, encountering with the Native American tribes. This started major cultural exchanges for the groups. Pasco County, at that point became a point of interest to the Spanish explorers because of its strategic
coastal location. The legislation also created
Citrus County from the northern third of Hernando County. The county was named after
Samuel Pasco, who had just been elected to the
United States Senate, though he never visited the county. Pasco County's early towns were Anclote, Blanton,
Dade City,
Earnestville, Fort Dade (not to be confused with
Fort Dade on
Egmont Key), Macon (
Trilby),
Lacoochee,
St. Leo, and
San Antonio. Dade City was named the temporary county seat with the same legislation to make Pasco County. It stayed temporary until March 14, 1889, when W.B. Lynch got a petition with 320 signatures to hold an election for the county seat. The board accepted the petition with the election for April 11, 1889. On April 16, 1889, Dade city won with 432 votes of the 765. Though, in December 1894 and then again in February 1895, temperatures fell throughout the state, in an event called
The Great Freeze. Many citrus growers lost their crops from the freeze in Pasco County.
20th Century changes As early as 1914, residents of the western part of the county proposed forming a separate county or merging with Pinellas County, as Dade City was not centrally located in the county. Several large sawmills operated in the county in the early part of the 20th century. The issue was finally resolved in 1979 with the construction of identical government centers in both Dade City and New Port Richey, now called West Pasco Government Center and East Pasco Government Center.
Early train system The SAL Tarpon Springs branch line from Tarpon Junction 14 miles west of Tampa to Elfers and thence to New Port Richey lost its passenger service and became listed as freight only between 1932 and 1938. The freight branch was truncated to Elfers in 1943. The tracks from Elfers and Chemical (an industrial area in the extreme southwest part of the county along the
Anclote River west of Holiday) to
Tarpon Springs had its last freight train on December 24, 1986, leaving the western half of the county without freight rail service. The Atlantic Coast Line Railroad until 1957 ran the
Southland through Trilby and
Tarpon Springs, en route to St. Petersburg. The train was unusual for providing passenger service direct from Chicago (via the
Pennsylvania), Cincinnati and Atlanta on a direct route through the western part of the Florida peninsula, bypassing
Jacksonville. The
Seaboard Coast Line (a merged line from the Atlantic Coast Line and the Seaboard Air Line) until 1971 ran a local train (the last passenger train for the region north of St. Petersburg and west of Dade City) through those towns from Jacksonville and
Gainesville, bound for St. Petersburg. Prior to the 1967 merger for the SCL that service had been the western branch of the ACL's
Champion from New York City. Until 1968 the SCL ran its
Sunland from Washington, DC and Portsmouth, VA to Tampa.
Land boom During the Florida land boom of the 1920s, New Port Richey became the winter home of silent screen star
Thomas Meighan and golfer
Gene Sarazen; Meighan attempted to bring other Hollywood figures to the city. The county has experienced significant population growth since the 1970s, growing by over 600%. The growth began along the Gulf coast but is now occurring most rapidly in areas north of Tampa.
Recent history Pasco County has historically been a
bedroom community for
Tampa and St. Petersburg. Though, recent companies are constructing major centers in the county, such as
Moffit Cancer Center's Speros campus, which is expected to bring over 11,000 jobs. ==Geography==