Osprey Observer
By Charles Nelson
Indeed, one of Gibsonton’s most fascinating historical characteristics is the large number of carnival workers who called the town home. But the carnival folks didn’t create ‘Gibtown,’ as they called it. Gibsonton got its start in 1923, when Tampa attorney James B. Gibson Jr. sought to turn his family’s “old homestead” into a thriving new community during Florida’s 1920s Great Land Boom.
In 1884, James Barney Gibson Sr. moved his family to Hillsborough County from Alabama to start anew. He chose a homestead on the south bank of the sparsely settled Alafia River (west of today’s U.S. 41). Long ago, that location seemed the site of a small, native village dating to around 800 A.D. (A large shell mound and a burial mound stood on Gibson Sr.’s homestead.) His family made a reasonable living in farming and in selling shell to pave roads in Hillsborough County. Yet, it was his son who became the father of Gibsonton.