Hills of Roser Park

Stairway to a House on a Hill

St. Petersburg is a great place to live, and you can find just about any sort of diversion or entertainment that you might want. But what if you come from the north and you really miss having hills around you? Or maybe you’re a born and bred St. Petersburg native, but you’d love a change of terrain once in awhile?

You probably think you’re out of luck. Everybody knows that there are no hills in St. Petersburg, right?

Well, you might be surprised! In fact, I have friends who have lived here for their entire lives and they don’t know about our hills.

So, if you’d like a change of scenery, I’m going to tell you where to find it. You can do a little driving tour, you can park your car and take a walk, or you can even bring a blanket and a lunch and have a picnic on the side of a hill, right in the heart of St. Petersburg. This is truly a hidden St. Petersburg gem, and it’s one worth exploring!

Looking Down From Above Roser Park

House on a Hill

The place to go is Roser Park. It’s located directly behind All Children’s Hospital, and it’s bounded, roughly, by 6th Street South and Dr. ML King Street South (formerly 9th Street South) and by 7th Avenue South and 11th Avenue South. In addition to a beautiful public park with a creek running alongside, you’ll also see picturesque brick roads and stately early St. Petersburg homes, homes that were owned and occupied by some of St. Petersburg’s most prosperous residents in the early 1900′s. Built by Charles Martin Roser beginning in 1911, the Roser Park homes were actually St. Petersburg’s first ‘out of the city’ development, a sort of early 20th century suburb. For much more detail on Roser Park, check out the Historic Roser Park website.

But for an easy, present day treat, drive over to Roser Park and check it out. It’s a peaceful oasis of history and beauty only minutes away from anywhere in the city. I’ll do a post in the near future with more detail about this entire neighborhood, which is one of St. Petersburg’s six Historic Preservation Districts, but for now, I just want to show you the hills and get you excited enough to go and find this place!

(Please note: in order to see the true depth of the hills in these photos, click on any of the photos so that you can view a full-sized version of the photograph.)

Indian Shell Mound in Pinellas Point - Mound View

Everyone knows that St. Petersburg doesn’t have any hills, right? Wrong! We do have some hills scattered around the city.  They may not be the big, rolling hills that people in north Florida or much of the rest of the country are used to, but there are some hills to be found.  Some of them are real, naturally occurring hills that managed to challenge the status quo of the otherwise flat terrain in our area.  But some of them were man-made.  In future posts, I’ll talk about some of the other hills that you can explore in St. Petersburg, but for today’s post, I’m going to tell you about one particular man-made hill that’s an interesting St. Petersburg spot.

The hill that I’m talking about is actually an Indian shell mound.  It was built by native St. Petersburg residents, probably in the early 1500’s.  Although there is a plaque posted at the site that credits the Timucua Indians with its construction, that may not be correct, as the Timucua Indians seem generally to have lived in areas further north in Florida.  Other sources credit the Tocobaga Indians, who are definitely known to have had villages on the northern end of Tampa Bay.  Local historian Walter P. Fuller, in his publication “St. Petersburg and Its People”, simply referred to the local Indian people of that era as the “Spanish Indians”.

In any case, the local residents built shell mounds for a variety of reasons.  Some mounds were constructed to be used as the tribe temple, and that is believed to be the purpose behind this mound in Pinellas Point.  Mounds were also constructed to be used as the home for the tribe’s chief.  There were burial mounds.  And there were ‘kitchen middens’.  The kitchen midden was, in essence, a garbage mound that was built next to the kitchen.  Since shellfish was one of the prime food sources for the native St. Petersburg residents, the kitchen midden could grow to great heights as the discarded shells of their food supply were piled into the mound.

Princess Hirrihigua Plaque

There’s a legend associated with the tribe that built this mound.  It’s about an Indian Princess who saved an explorer from death.  Really!  Sounds a lot like another legend that we all learned about in school, doesn’t it?  Rather than retell the story here, I would like to refer you to the plaque that’s posted at the site of this mound, and on the plaque, you can read the story for yourself.  I’ve posted a small thumbnail photo of the plaque here, and if you click on it, it will take you to a full-size photo of the plaque which should be big enough for you to read.

So, that’s it for today – it’s just an interesting little piece of history, tucked away in the middle of a residential area of our 21st century city.  If you’d like to visit the site yourself, it’s located at Pinellas Point Drive South, at about 21st Street South.