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By Melody Jameson
mj@observernews.net
A fossil discovery that rocked the world of paleontology…
Verified, functioning villages of the region’s pre-Columbian
human inhabitants…
Massive landing and encampment of conquistadors, horses, swine, dogs, under command of the exploring Hernando de Soto …
Establishment of an unusual communal colony where field labor and higher education were hand in hand…
Development of an agricultural community that would come to be known as America’s salad bowl…
…these are a few of the highlights from South Hillsborough’s historically rich and legendary past.
They are not, however, featured anywhere in the new, multi-million-dollar Tampa Bay History Center which opened about six months ago in Tampa’s Channelside district.
Why? Because, in the simplest terms, an attractive history center is of necessity an evolving creation, Curator Rodney Kite-Powell, told The Observer this week. But, he added, what might be interpreted as oversights now can be rectified in the foreseeable future.
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| Giving this Tampa Bay History Center exhibit more than a once over, Fred Jacobsen (far right) and Dr. Arthur "Mac" Miller intently inspect a portion of the opening section at the new facility that deals with the area prior to arrival of Europeans. The two South Hillsborough history and preservation activists were disappointed in their search for recognition of the South County's rich and colorful contributions to the region's documented past. However, the situation could change in the foreseeable future.
Melody Jameson Photo |
The Observer last week accompanied two of South Hillsborough’s most ardent history and preservation activists as they toured the new center in which both became early members. Dr. Arthur “Mac” Miller, retired college professor, is a direct descendant of one of Ruskin’s two founding families and resides with his family in one of the community’s historic homes. Fred Jacobsen, current president of the Ruskin Community Development Foundation, instituted the fledgling Ruskin History Center now housed in the local Fifth Third Bank branch lobby and maintains, as well, the constantly-expanding RuskinHistory.org website.
Both were disappointed by what they did not find. While the history center is housed in a striking structure and is a community asset, the gaps, lacks and inaccuracies, they said, were particularly noticeable at the very beginning of the history center exhibits.
For the majority of visitors to the new, multi-level facility, their tour begins at the first exhibit floor on the second story. It opens with some six displays, most of them informational wall mountings, which purport to present tastes of the area’s earliest known history. None of them, though, refer to the Uzitas (sometimes called Ucitas), the native tribe, whose villages, shell middens and ceremonial grounds around the mouth of the Little Manatee River as it empties into Tampa Bay were well documented by surviving conquistadors from the 1539 De Soto expedition.
What’s more, the De Soto expedition is only alluded to in one segment of the opening exhibit and that erroneously places landing of the huge exploration party around Longboat Key off the Sarasota coastline south of Tampa Bay. Numerous historians have pinpointed the landing near Piney Point south of the Little Manatee River, with most of the off-loaded fighting force forging northward by land to cross the river and encounter the Uzitas near Ruskin’s Shell Point.
The exhibit also includes a hollowed-out tree trunk canoe of the type fashioned and used by early peoples in the area, but nowhere displays any of the hundreds of fossils uncovered by Frank Garcia during the archeological digs in South Hillsborough that sparked international news stories and introduced a new pre-historic creature.
Another component of the area’s earliest history exhibit is a professionally-produced 15-minute video, which endeavors to instruct and entertain visitors with the exploits of conquering foreigners. Titled “Winds of Change,” the film in full color succeeds in entertaining with its technology and special effects, Miller agreed. But the South County native questioned the instructive quality, pointing to the heavy focus on Panfilo de Narvaez, an especially brutal explorer who led most of his contingent only to starvation and death with his consuming greed and poor judgment.
“De Narvaez floundered around off what now is the Pinellas County coast, accomplishing little,” Miller noted, “while the De Soto expedition landed in what would become Hillsborough County by way of Tampa Bay, interacted with the natives and proceeded by land up the peninsula, eventually reaching as far north as southern Tennessee and, in the process, creating a record that added to the body of knowledge of that time.”
Jacobsen expressed similar disappointment in connection with a large, wall-hung graphic among the history center’s second floor of displays. A sort of map featuring cartoon-like characters to portray specific locales, Jacobsen said he thought the exhibit “overly simplified” and noted that Ruskin is “barely on the map. The community that had its own college about a century before HCC arrived, that established one of the first utilities, that pioneered shipping packaging for vegetables, that produced the crops that fed Tampa and beyond apparently doesn’t have a place at the table,” he said.
Responding to some of the issues raised by Miller and Jacobsen, Kite-Powell noted that while he and other history experts did much of the research on which the center’s exhibits are based, some was done by vendors. The “Winds of Change” video, for example, is entirely a vendor’s product and the focus on De Narvaez is explained by the fact he was the first of the Spanish explorers to approach Florida’s west coast , although not the most effective providing the most useful information for those following. The video also runs longer than the originally planned 12 minutes, Kite-Powell noted.
The curator, a Tampa native and now 36, who earned degrees in history from the University of Florida and the University of South Florida, pointed out, too, that the history center is not designed to be a science museum. The fossils that put Ruskin’s Leisey Shell Pit and its discoveries on the paleontology map were not included for that reason, he indicated. Also, he added, “we cannot display what we do not have.”
The history center objective is not to concentrate on specific geographic areas within the region, but rather to provide a grasp of the history of the whole “thematically,” in an interesting, entertaining manner, Kite-Powell asserted. When reminded that the center does concentrate on a particular geographic area at the present time – with an extensive three-dimensional Ybor City exhibit, he acknowledged the fact, adding “Tampa just wouldn’t be Tampa without the Ybor City history.” With a bow to the contributions of the Ruskin area to the regional history, the curator emphasized that “the impact of the cigar industry was international.”
And, when the apparent error concerning landing site of the De Soto expedition was pointed out, Kite-Powell suggested that it actually may have been the De Narvaez expedition that made a landing off the Sarasota coast.
Regardless of the reasons related to the issues Miller and Jacobsen singled out in their tour of the history center, there is no intent “to be negligent,” Kite-Powell said. “We had to start somewhere,” he added, “and work with what we had.”
In fact, the curator said that as part of the ongoing effort to encourage visitor returns, an exhibits committee soon will re-evaluate the various galleries that comprise the center. Asked if this means South County history could get more and more accurate attention, Kite-Powell replied “it’s doable.” He added that he could not immediately provide a timetable but that review of current exhibits and consideration of new material expanding on the South Hillsborough role in regional history could be “in the near future.”
Another opportunity to integrate South County’s contributions into the unfolding lore of the region could come with activation of the history center’s third exhibit floor designated for “traveling exhibits.” This portion of the center is to house either exhibitions coming in from other venues or rotating displays built locally, Kite-Powell said. The first traveling exhibit, slated to open in September and run through December, 2009, deals with the history of Florida’s cattle industry, he added. After that, “anything is possible,” he said.
The Tampa Bay History Center, which began as a small exhibit on the second floor in the county courthouse, first was discussed as a free-standing facility in the mid1980s and has gone through several evolutions over the years. Today’s modernistic facility with its multiple high tech features represents a $21 million investment, cushioned with a $15 million operating endowment. It frequently is pointed to as a successful example of public-private partnership.
©2009 Melody Jameson
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