Tarpon Springs, Florida: A Great Place to Call Home

Tarpon Springs is a great place to live. If it’s Tarpon Springs real estate you are interested in, Tarpon Springs offers many types of homes, from bungalows to gated communities to mansions. You can enjoy the waterfront view from your front porch along the beautiful Anclote River. There are many beautiful waterfront communities in Tarpon Springs along the Gulf of Mexico and bordering Lake Tarpon.

For roughly $3 million dollars you can buy a 6000 square foot home that is reminiscent of old European grandeur on S. Florida Avenue that has a wide open view of the Gulf of Mexico. The property sits on 1.6 private acres. On the low end, you can buy a condo-hotel with waterfront access for under $150,000. There are many other great choices in between for Tarpon Springs real estate on and off the water.

For recreational activities in Tarpon Springs, my family and I have spent many days at Howard Park, with picnic facilities, playgrounds and its own beach where we enjoy the beautiful Florida sunsets. Tarpon Springs is known for its historic Sponge Docks and the biggest Epiphany celebration in the country, held annually in the month of January. You can enjoy authentic Greek food and pastries in its many restaurants. We enjoy a little restaurant called Plakas where they say they are the “Greek McDonalds”. They have wonderful gyros and offer appetizers of Greek specialties such as marinated octopus! The Sponge Dock area also offers shopping, day-trip cruises, casino cruises or fishing trips. You can have a tour aboard a sponge boat and watch divers as they retrieve sponges from the Gulf of Mexico. You can also visit authentic Greek clubs where men spend the afternoon telling stories and playing cards.

Along with its Sponge Docks, Tarpon Springs offers a 120,000 gallon aquarium, a Performing Arts Center, a Cultural Center, and the Leepa-Ratner Museum of Art which has been brought to the city by the St. Petersburg College of Tarpon Springs. For the fourth time in four years, St. Pete College has been rated number 1 in the state of Florida for distance education.

We also enjoy attending the Sunset Beach concerts, The Fine Arts Festival each April and attending wine tasting events at the Tarpon Springs Castle Winery. The historic downtown area offers First Fridays and Second Saturdays where the shops and restaurants are open late and there often is free entertainment to enjoy while you shop and dine.

Tarpon Springs, in northern Pinellas County, is centrally located to Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater and is only 90 minutes away from Disney World and Sea World which are in Orlando, Florida. Tarpon Springs is a great place to call home or buy real estate with all it has to offer.

Bob Lipply is a top Broker Associate working in the Tarpon Springs Real Estate market. He and his team work full time in Tarpon Springs helping clients buy and sell their homes. Lipply Real Estate also specializes in Palm Harbor Real Estate. Visit his website where you can search the MLS for up to date available homes for sale all over Pinellas County.

Imagine a little piece of Greece transplanted to the northern part of Pinellas County. The delightful town of Tarpon Springs, which has a population of around 20,000 is famous for its unique Greek heritage and culture. It also has the distinction of being the oldest town in the St Petersburg area.

The first Greek immigrants were attracted to the area during the 1800s when they were employed in the thriving sponge industry. The town was given its name after residents spotted fish jumping out of the water and in 1905 sponge diving was introduced to the town. By 1930, millions of dollars a year were being generated by the sponge industry.

Today, although the sponge industry isn't as profitable as it once was, Tarpon Springs retains its unique Greek culture and not surprisingly, has the largest percentage of Greek-Americans in the country. Today, more than 20 restaurants offer authentic Greek cuisine and the downtown area offers antique shops, boutiques and specialty stores.

The town is also well known for its Epiphany celebrations every year in January – the largest such festival in the United States. Naturally, delicious Greek food and traditional music feature large in the festivities, as well as several religious services.

Undoubtedly though, the highlight of the event is the spectacle of several young men of the town diving into the cold waters of the bayou to retrieve a wooden cross. Tradition says that whoever recovers the cross will be blessed for the next year, and the proud winner is carried triumphantly through the town.

And, if like many others before, you have the urge to buy a home, a second home, a vacation home – or even relocate - to this unique and fascinating town, property in Tarpon Springs is affordable and plentiful.

Homes for sale in Tarpon Springs range from sprawling waterfront properties such as Anclote Isles to exclusive gated golf course communities like Wentworth or Crescent Oaks to imposing mansions in and around Craig’s Park. The more affordable end of the market has a wide selection of condos, modest single family homes, and mobile homes as well. Greece never seemed so easy to get to!

Tarpon Springs' Sponge Industry

By Marc G Washburn

Many tourists vacationing on the Florida beaches of Clearwater or St. Petersburg have made the short trip north to the small town of Tarpon Springs. The charming town is lined with Greek restaurants, bakeries, gift shops and of course, the sponge merchants. One ponders, after eating the Gyros, the sweet honey-laced baklava and the powdered sugar-coated wedding cakes, how it all started? How could this small town in Florida boast that over 70% of its residents are Greek-speaking? The answer: because of the sponge industry, this melting pot just didn't melt.

The beginning of the sponge industry in Tarpon Springs actually traces back to Key West, in the early 19th century. Many fishermen would find grass sponges washed ashore after storms. This led to the development of "hook boats" which were small boats that would row or sail a short distance off-shore. These early spongers used a log pole with a three or four prong rake at the end to hook sponges from the shallow waters.

Soon thereafter, the sponge industry boomed in the Key West area. Word of the new industry spread as far away as New York City, which by 1849 became a lively sponging market. Because there was no direct link from Key West to New York by sea or by land, the sponges were first shipped from Key West to Tampa Bay, then carried by wagon from Tampa to New York City by livery business owner Granville Noblit, Sr. Key West became the leading source of natural sponges for the Northeast. This soon changed with technology advancements that enabled men to dive for sponges. The sponge divers found larger beds filled with new and different varieties of sponges further north in the Gulf of Mexico.

In 1889, John K. Cheney, a wealthy Philadelphia banker, observed the sponge industry at Key West, and realized that the sponge variety offered in Gulf of Mexico just off of Tampa Bay was greater and more diverse. He recognized the natural advantage of locating the sponge harvesting closer to both the carriage routes and the richer sponging waters of the Gulf of Mexico. He soon built warehouses in what is now known as Tarpon Springs to try to make it the leading market. He and Ernest Meres became the first sponge merchants in Tarpon Springs, buying for New York interests.

In 1896, John Cocoris, a Greek immigrant and sponge buyer working in New York City, arrived in Tarpon Springs. He went to work for John Cheney and with Cheney's financial backing, recruited 500 sponge divers from Greece. The first diver hired was Demosthenes Kavasilas, who brought his experience from the Mediterranean Sea, as did the second diver, Stylianos Besis. The divers were amazed at the natural fortune of the Gulf of Mexico. Sponges by the thousands darkened the virgin and un-trodden sea floor. The bottom was so thick with sponges, that every 10 minutes the divers sent up baskets filled with large wool-sponges, the best and sturdiest in the world. By evening, the diving boat would be filled with sponges. They began to add more boats and men as fast as possible.

By the end of 1906, 1,500 Greek sponge divers and workers had arrived in Tarpon Springs. The sponge industry grew tremendously in the 1920's and 1930's with a fleet of about 200 ships. In 1936, Tarpon Springs was recognized as the sponge capital of the world, and more than 2,000 Greeks had moved to the area. However, in 1946, a disease (red tide) attacked the Gulf of Mexico and killed almost all of the sponges. To make matters worse, the invention of the synthetic sponge in the 1940's by the DuPont company also devastated the Florida sponge industry. By the 1960's and 1970's the sponge industry began to rebound - although the sponge divers of the Mediterranean and Aegean seas had now become the leaders of the industry. Fate had something else in store because in 1986, the Mediterranean sponges were exposed to blight disease and nearly all sponges in the Aegean sea were destroyed. Tarpon Springs was able to once again claim its title as the "Sponge Capital of the World."

Tourism has now replaced sponging as Tarpon Springs' major economic activity. Thousands of visitors come to the city each year to enjoy the outdoors, play golf or fish. While shopping for art and antiques or touring charming Victorian neighborhoods, tourists have the unique opportunity to take a break and visit the Sponge Docks to experience Greek culture right here in Tarpon Springs.

Marc Washburn is not only a resident of Tarpon Springs, but also a Sea Sponge merchant. His e-store Natural Bath & Body Shop carries traditional Greek Olive Oil Soaps, Loofah and the largest selection of Sea Sponges available online.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Marc_G_Washburn
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