Temple Terrace, Florida

Temple Terrace is a city in northeastern Hillsborough County, Florida, United States, adjacent to Tampa. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 26,690. It is the third and smallest incorporated municipality in Hillsborough County, after Tampa and Plant City. Incorporated in 1925, the community is known for its rolling landscape, bucolic Hillsborough River views, and sand live oak trees; it is a Tree City USA. Originally planned in the 1920s as a Mediterranean-Revival golf course community, it is one of the first such communities in the United States. It is part of the Tampa–St. Petersburg–Clearwater Metropolitan Statistical Area, more commonly known as the Tampa Bay area.

Temple Terrace was named for the then-new hybrid, the Temple orange also called the tangor. It is a cross between the mandarin orange—also called the tangerine—and the common sweet orange; it was named after Florida-born William Chase Temple, one-time owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates, founder of the Temple Cup, and first president of the Florida Citrus Exchange. Temple Terrace was the first place in the United States where the new Temple orange was grown in large quantities. The "terrace" portion of the name refers to the terraced terrain of the area by the river where the city was founded. One of the original houses also had a terraced yard with a lawn sloping, in tiers, toward the river.

The original inhabitants of the Temple Terrace area were known as the Tocobaga, a group of Native Americans living around Tampa Bay, both in prehistoric and historic times, until roughly 1760.

Spanish exploration of the Temple Terrace area dates back to 1757 when explorer Don Francisco Maria Celi of the Spanish Royal Fleet made his way up the Hillsborough River (naming it "El Rio de San Julian y Arriaga") to what is now Riverhills Park in search of pine trees to use as masts for his ships. Here, in the extensive longleaf pine forest, he erected a cross in what he named "El Pinal de la Cruz de Santa Teresa" (the Pine Forest of the Cross of Saint Theresa). Confirmation of the fleet's travels is found in its map and logbook. A historic marker and a replica of the cross erected to honor St. Theresa are found in Riverhills Park today. Up to 1913, the longleaf pine, sand live oak, and cypress trees made the area suitable for turpentine manufacturing and logging.

The area now known as Temple Terrace was originally part of an exclusive 19,000-acre (77 km²) game preserve called "Riverhills" belonging to Chicago socialite Bertha Palmer, wife of businessman Potter Palmer. She played an extensive role in making Sarasota the "City of the Arts" that it is today. She was one of the largest landholders, ranchers, farmers, and developers in Florida at the turn of the twentieth century. The Evening Independent newspaper in 1918 described the preserve as "a well-stocked hunting preserve north of Tampa being one of the most attractive hunting grounds in the state." Property acquisition by the Palmers and the Honorés began in 1910; only one of the original buildings from the preserve, now known as the Woodmont Clubhouse, remains. Because it escaped logging, the grounds of the clubhouse harbor some of the largest specimens of live oak and longleaf pine in the city.

Mrs. Potter-Palmer's vision for her property was that it be developed into a golf course community surrounded by extensive citrus groves, but her death in 1918 prevented her from fully realizing that vision. At her death, the trustee of her estate and brother, Adrian Honoré, sold her local land holdings to Burks Hamner,

Vance Helm, Maud Fowler, Cody Fowler, and D. Collins Gillett, who formed two development corporations: Temple Terrace Estates, Inc., which developed the golf course and residential areas; and Temple Terraces, Inc., which developed 5,000 acres (20 km²) of orange groves that originally surrounded the city to the west and north, the largest orange grove in the world in the 1920s. (Adrian Honoré retained a seat on the board.) D. Collins Gillett oversaw Temple Terraces, Inc. and owned the first and largest citrus nursery in Florida, Buckeye Nurseries of Tampa. His father, Myron E. Gillett, thirty-first mayor of Tampa, was instrumental in popularizing the exotic hybrid Temple orange in the United States.

The 1920 vision for the community was that wealthy retired Northerners would purchase one of the lots in Temple Terrace, build a Mediterranean Revival villa on the lot and also purchase a parcel in the extensive adjoining citrus grove to either manage as a hobby or provide extra income. Temple Terrace was originally only occupied during "The Season" (which lasted roughly from December to the annual Washington Ball held at the clubhouse on February 22). For the rest of the year, the houses were cared for by caretakers until The Season came again and the homeowners returned.