Overview

From its idyllic source in the Green Swamp, the Hillsborough River winds past columns of cypress and matted shrubs and opens into Tampa Bay, part of Florida's urbanized, publicized western Suncoast. The river is not a long one, but the size of its legend in contemporary America is far-reaching. Many factors have made the area special: its natural history; its successive waves of immigrants; its wars, booms, and depressions. The cigar industry, banana exporting, cattle raising, fishing, and retirement have attracted many settlers in search of the ""Golden Ibis."" All too often the vision has proved elusive, but for some, like Henry Plant and Doc Webb, the spectacular was possible. For others, like the Seminoles, a way of life ended. In a narrative that is as exciting to read as it is historically compelling, Gloria Jahoda traces the Hillsborough River's origin to prehistoric times, chronicles the arrivals of the conquistadores, the missionaries, and the marauders greedy for civilizing and for treasure, and points out how 20th-century ambitions threaten to destroy the environment as surely as earlier encroachment annihilated native peoples.

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9780813017891

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Reviews

A beautifully written informal account of the Tampa Bay region . -- Library Journal

"""A beautifully written informal account of the Tampa Bay region"". -- Library Journal"

A caring if rather meticulously researched account (but then this is in the Rivers of America series) of the author's love affair with the Tampa Bay region on Florida's gulf coast. This history cum autobiographical reminiscence covers everything from geographical formation to Ponce de Leon's dog Bexerillo - from the original settlers to the doomed de Soto, the acquisition by Britain, then America, colonization and the inhumanities of Jackson's Seminole War against the heroic Osceola, the Civil War depression and Henry Plant's dream and railroads and hotels and the cigar industry (along with the first Cuban revolutionaries), plodding on up through Italian immigrants, roaring '20's Tin-Can tourists (who brought their winter meals with them) to the banana and fishing industries to the oil spills and pollution that now threaten the bay. There is even a spirited defense of Sunshine State culture - from composer Jaromir Weinberger (?) to onetime resident Jack Kerouac, but the heart of the book is in the change from wilderness to civilization to nobody knows quite what: airport? Everglades? Hillsborough River? or the dying of America's. Dream, or perhaps America itself? (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Gloria Jahoda, who lived in Tallahassee, Florida, was the author of The Other Florida, The Road to Samarkand, and the novels Annie and Delilah's Mountain. She died in 1980. River of the Golden Ibis was originally published in 1973.

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