The Name That Almost Was Detroit

This city was very nearly named Detroit. In the eighteen seventies, a man from Michigan named John Constantine Williams bought a large tract of this land, dreaming of building a city on the peninsula. But land without a railroad was worthless, and the railroad arrived thanks to a very different man, a Russian immigrant and exiled nobleman named Pyotr Dementyev, who Americanized his name to Peter Demens.

Demens pushed the Orange Belt Railway all the way to the waterfront, reaching the settlement in eighteen eighty-eight. The popular legend says the two founders flipped a coin for the honor of naming the town. Demens won, and named it Saint Petersburg after the Russian imperial city where he had spent much of his youth.

Williams, the story goes, got the consolation prize of naming the first grand hotel, and he called it the Detroit, after his home city. It is a wonderful story, and locals have told it for over a century. But historians caution that there is little evidence any coin toss actually happened.

The more likely truth is simply that Demens, running the more sophisticated operation, filed the paperwork and got to choose. Either way, the name stuck, and a slice of the Florida Gulf Coast carries the memory of a czar's capital.