Up to 1914, the Pinellas peninsula was part of Hillsborough County, even though it was widely separated from the county seat in Tampa and transportation back and forth was limited.

As early as 1886, Clearwater pioneer W.A. Belcher pushed for a state law to divide the county.

Just as the issue of taxation without representation caused a heated dispute between America’s founding fathers and the English Crown more than a century earlier, taxation without return benefit became the rallying cry in West Hillsborough, as Pinellas was then called, and its fight for independence.

In 1907, after W.L. Straub, editor of the St. Petersburg Times wrote a fiery editorial describing the inequities of taxation of Pinellas residents by Tampa with little or nothing in return, the fight began to gain broad support.

In 1911, John S. Taylor, Sr. and S.D. Harris lobbied in Tallahassee for a bill to create Pinellas County. The bill passed on May 23 of that year.

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