What’s in a name
Peter Demens: named St. Petersburg for Russian hometown


Demens Landing at 1st Ave and North Shore Drive was named for Peter Demens, co-founder of St. Petersburg.
[Times files]

By Betty Jean Miller, staff writer
©St. Petersburg Times, published June 17, 1991


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With the Russian republic having voted to return Leningrad to its former name of St. Petersburg, it is appropriate to recall the Russian immigrant who not only named our city for his hometown, but who put our city on the map.

His name was Piotr Alexewitch Dementief, or Dementyev; accounts vary. But here, Peter Demens was his name and railroads were his game -- the "Orange Belt Railroad" to be specific.


Orange Belt Railroad
Orange Belt Ry. # 7 (2nd) with passenger train.
[Times files]                    See larger view of # 7

By Karl Grismer, staff writer
©St. Petersburg Times

He and John Constantine Williams were co-founders of St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg named one of its waterfront parks "Demens Landing" in his memory. It is at First Avenue and North Shore Drive SE.

Demens was born May 1, 1850, in St. Petersburg, Russia, to a noble Russian family. He was well-educated and could speak French, German and English.

He also had close contact with the top officials of the country. Demens, a captain in the Russian imperial guard, came to America in the early 1880’s.

The handsome, charismatic aristocrat arrived at Longwood, just south of Sanford, and went into the lumber business. His company built station houses and supplied railroad ties for the "Orange Belt Railroad", which was then under construction in Florida.

When the lumber ran out in the Longwood area in 1885, Demens was owed money by the little railroad, so he took over its charter. Demens persuaded Josef Henschen, a winter visitor from Buffalo, N.Y., to invest $20,000; Henry Sweetapple, a Canadian, to invest $15,000; and A. M. Taylor, from Staunton, Va., to invest another $2,000 in the narrow-gauge railroad.

The corporation bought the cars, engines and rails on credit and got donations of land for right-of-way. By 1886 the Orange Belt extended to a town about 20 miles southwest of Sanford, but Demens’ goal was Point Pinellas and the Gulf of Mexico, about 120 miles further.

To get there, the company proposed selling $700,000 worth of bonds. Throughout 1886, Demens had little luck getting a New York brokerage firm, "Griswold and Gillette", to help him. He then heard from Hamilton Disston, who owned vast amounts of Florida acreage, much of it in Pinellas County.

Disston would give land and town sites along the right-of-way. He wanted to get a railroad to Disston City, a flourishing little town where Gulfport is now.

"Griswold and Gillette" was impressed and sold the railroad bonds.

Demens planned a terminus on Mullet Key, now Fort De Soto, where he would build a city on the main shipping channel into Tampa Bay, and have the only harbor on the West Coast of Florida.

Disston’s Florida Land and Improvement Co. rejected Demen’s proposal on Dec. 18, 1886. It was too grandiose a plan.

Back to the drawing board.

In January 1887, Sweetapple, the Orange Belt treasurer, began negotiating with J. C. Williams, who agreed to donate some land in what is now downtown St. Petersburg if the railroad would extend through his village and into Tampa Bay.

Demens and his group were set to go with this plan when "Griswold and Gillette" notified them of “unexpected delays” in financing.

Again Demens’ charm worked. He borrowed $100,000 from "H. O. Armour & Co." He settled early debts and hired railroad workers, paying them with the remaining $15,000. But that money did not go far.

The brokerage firm would not give anymore money until rails were laid. Demens could not lay rails until he had money.

Add to this situation heavy rains, a yellow fever epidemic in 1887 and an angry creditor who chained the engines to the rails. Sweetapple died of a stroke in 1887.

Demens persevered. He borrowed another $10,000 from friends to get the engines unchained. He wrote a desperate letter to Griswold and Gillette.

But no money came.

On Oct. 1, 1887, an angry mob of workers gathered at Longwood demanding three weeks’ back wages and threatening to lynch Demens.

Demens again got his friends to come through for him and paid off the angry workers.

And on Oct. 3, shipments of steel for rails began coming in. With more track laid, Demens could borrow more money. He kept his employees working overtime, but did not finish by his December 1887 deadline.

By April 30, 1888, the railroad came to Ninth Street S and First Avenue. At this time, either by a tossing of coins, a drawing of straws or the whim of a partner, the city was named St. Petersburg. The versions vary, but Demens had earned it.

The first train arrived on June 8. By the end of 1888, the Orange Belt extended to a fine Russian-style terminal between Second and Third streets on First Avenue S. And shortly after, to a railroad pier that stretched 2,000 feet into the bay.

Although its terminus immediately began to thrive as a city, the Orange Belt was not a financial success at the outset. It was in such bad financial straits that it was taken over by the Philadelphia and New York syndicates that had so much money invested in it.

Demens was forced out in 1889, but not defeated.

He bought and operated a planing mill in Asheville, N.C., then went to Los Angeles in 1892, where he bought a steam laundry. He sold it four years later for $200,000, which he invested in citrus in nearby Alta Loma, Calif.

He devoted the rest of his life to orange culture, study and writing. This included articles for the Los Angeles Times and stories about political affairs in Europe, where he traveled for the Associated Press.

He and his wife had four children born in Russia, two born in Florida and one born in North Carolina.

With Demens’ Russian ties, the Russian Revolution had such an effect on him that it was said to have ruined his health.

He died in 1919 in California.

-- Information in this story came from The Story of St. Petersburg, by Karl Grismer and from
St. Petersburg Times files.


St. Petersburg, Florida station.


While it officially became a city in 1915, Clearwater’s history dates back to the late 1800’s.
1888 - Orange Belt Railway Station, Clearwater, Florida.

See Also:

The narrow gauge Orange Belt Railway.................................................(12/1998)

The Pinellas Trail is the Old Orange Belt Railway .................................(9/2011)

History of Pasco County Railroads ............................................(1943 thru 2018)



Go Back to The Vinoy history timeline

 

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