page_title: Hillsborough County, Florida
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Hillsborough County, Florida / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The old Hillsborough County Courthouse in Tampa Florida, since demolished.
context_page_description: Hillsborough County is a county located in the west central portion of the U.S. state of Florida. In the 2010 census, the population was 1,229,226, making it the fourth-most populous county in Florida and the most populous county outside the Miami metropolitan area. A 2019 estimate has the population of Hillsborough County at 1,471,968 people, which itself is greater than the populations of 12 states according to their 2019 population estimates. Its county seat and largest city is Tampa. Hillsborough County is part of the Tampa–St. Petersburg–Clearwater Metropolitan Statistical Area.
context_section_description: Hillsborough County was created on January 25, 1834, from Alachua and Monroe Counties, during the U.S. territorial period (1822–1845). The new county was named for Wills Hill, the Earl of Hillsborough, who served as British Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1768 to 1772. The County was created through efforts by Augustus Steele.
  The county's 1834 area was much larger and included eight other present-day counties: Charlotte County, DeSoto, Hardee, Manatee, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk, and Sarasota.
  The last significant change in Hillsborough County's borders was the separation of its western section to create Pinellas County in 1911.
  On New Year's Day in 1914, the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line initiated the first scheduled commercial airline service in the world, from St. Petersburg to Tampa.
caption: Hillsborough County Courthouse, circa 1891
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