St. Peterburg sits on the eastern edge of the Pinellas Peninsula, about twenty minutes from Tampa. The city is located on a peninsula between Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. It is connected to the mainland to the north, connected with the city of Tampa to the east by causeways and bridges across Tampa Bay, and to Bradenton in the south by the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, which traverses the mouth of the bay.

According to the St. Petersburg and Clearwater Area Convention & Visitors Bureau web site, the area is home to America's Award Winning Beaches. Made official by TripAdvisor's 2009 list of the top ten beaches in the U.S., Fort De Soto Park took top honors for the second consecutive year, while Honeymoon Island State Park ranked ninth.

History

The city was co-founded by John C. Williams who purchased the land in 1876, and by Peter Demens, who was crucial in bringing the terminus of a railroad there in 1888. St. Petersburg was incorporated on February 29, 1892, when it had a small population of only about 300 people. It was named after Saint Petersburg, Russia, where Peter Demens had spent half of his youth.

The city's first major industry was born in 1899 when Henry W. Hibbs, a native of Newport, North Carolina, started his wholesale fish business at the end of the railroad pier, which extended out to the shipping channel. Hibbs Fish Company was shipping more than a thousand pounds of fish each day within a year.