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North Pinellas Historical Museum displays Palm Harbor’s past

Hartley home, which houses the North Pinellas Historical Museum

Alright, I know what you’re thinking: “Where the heck have you been?”

It’s a fair question. First, we took a vacation and took the grandchildren up to Campbello Island in New Brunswick, Canada (more on this later). Then we came back to a bunch of moving chores and other demands that couldn’t be put off.  So here we are.

So, without further excuses, here’s a quick report on what we did today — a visit to the North Pinellas Historical Museum in Palm Harbor.

The museum is one of those places you can’t miss, being on the busy corner of Belcher and Curlew roads. But I’ve driven past it a million times and never stopped in before.  Today I resolved to do something different.

Cracker house behind the North Pinellas Historical Museum

The excuse was a yard sale on the grounds of the museum. There were a number of displays of all kinds of used stuff and we did a tour of the grounds before we went inside.  There were scores of people outside, either selling or buying stuff, but surprisingly there was no one inside the museum building excpet a couple of staffers. So we took our time moseying around inside.

The house itself was originally owned and built by the Hartley family, one of the early pioneer families of North Pinellas County.  A very nice museum volunteer told us how the house sat on the dirt road that was the main thoroughfare between Tampa and the Gulf many years ago, and she explained how people traveling over to the coast from Tampa would stop, water their horses, and perhaps use the Hartley’s outhouse.

The house ’s exterior is made up of concrete blocks which had been cast on the site.  The original block casts, she said, had been purchased from Sears & Roebuck. The house was built between 1915 and 1919.

The museum's parlor

Out back is a classic small Florida Cracker house, a simple living structure that was popular a hundred years ago.  Our guide explained to us how the cracker housercame to be in the back yard: A few years ago, the house had to be moved from its original North Pinellas location.  It was decided to move the house south to Largo, where the Pinellas County Heritage Village is located.

Once on the road, however, word came that the 21-acre Heritage Village facility had no room for the cracker house.  So… hurried negotiations resulted in the house being diverted to the North Pinellas Historical Museum site.

There are many things to see at the museum and lots to learn about Palm Harbor’s early days. Drop by sometime — admission is free, although they won’t turn down a voluntary donation.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 3rd, 2009 at 10:07 am and is filed under Florida, Palm Harbor, history. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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