Before there was a MacDill; pre-base history

  • Published
  • By Nick Stubbs
  • 6th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs
MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. --  July 13, 1939: The Tampa Tribune headline proclaimed "We get the big air base."
It was the news leading up to the official dedication of MacDill Field in 1941 - 70 years ago this week. But for the peninsula where MacDill Air Force Base, it was not the beginning of its local history or its military significance.

In 1898, the base was a sea of tents and a major staging and debarkation point for troops heading to Cuba during the Spanish-American War. According to the Tampa Bay History Center Archives, as many as 10,000 troops, mostly artillery and some cavalry, were living on the land that is now the base. They traveled to and from Fort Brooke, which was built in what now is downtown Tampa, via the railroad that was extended onto the peninsula in the 1880s by Henry Plant.

The area remained wild and untouched, even after the first expeditions before 1700. It wasn't until James Gadsden (for which Gadsden Point at the southeast corner of the base was named) arrived in 1824 that things happened in a big way.

Gadsden was here to seek a deep-water route in from the Gulf of Mexico and a place where the U.S. government could establish a fort. Deep water was essential to supply the fort and settlements that would crop up around it, but Tampa Bay at that time was shallow in Hillsborough Bay.

Legend has it that Gadsden left a message carved on a tree or rock at his namesake point, letting Col. George Brooke know that he should follow the land north from that point to the mouth of the Hillsborough, which is where Gadsden determined a fort should be built. Fort Brooke was built a short time later.

Small ships were able to reach the fort but it was challenging in the shallow water. Ballast Point, near the south gate entrance to MacDill, got its name because ships had to stop there to unload ballast stones in order to get their ships through the shallows leading to the fort.

The fort was the hub of development that would come. Settlements sprang up around it, and soon spread out onto what is now the MacDill peninsula. When the Civil War was over, the area boomed. Fort Brooke was captured by the Confederates for a time, but was retaken during a Union raid in May of 1864. After the war, the Lykes family arrived on the peninsula and settled, as did the Culbreath family, which planted orange groves.
About 30,000 troops were in the Tampa area during the Spanish-American War. While most were around the downtown area, many settled in tents, establishing the first military presence at what one day would be MacDill some 50 years before the air base would be built.

By the time the midpoint of the 20th century rolled around, there was much competition around the country for several big military bases planned by the government.
When Tampa got the nod for one of them, it was a happy day.

The first planes landed at the base in 1941 and the rest is (modern) history, as they say. An important military training base for B-26 and B-17 pilots and crews during WWII, MacDill, of course, later became the home of the 6th Air Mobility Wing, U.S. Central Command and Special Operations Command, making it one of the most important military installations anywhere in the world.

Some information for this article courtesy Rodney Kite-Powell, curator of the Tampa Bay History Center