J.C. Newman Cigar Company helps Tampa celebrate it's 136th birthday

TAMPA, Fla. - At the J.C. Newman Cigar Company in Ybor City, they roll cigars the same way they did a hundred years ago.

On this day, they’re helping celebrate Tampa’s 136th birthday with cigars instead of candles.

"This is the last cigar factory in the country, and it’s preserved," says Ellen Holcomb of Tampa. "And I think it’s helping renovate the area here in Ybor City."

READ: City of Tampa celebrates 135th birthday with Archives Awareness Week

"The future here might have looked very different had it not been for the past and the cigar industry that brought thousands of immigrants from all over the world to work in and around more than 200 Tampa cigar factories. "Without the Tampa cigar industry, There would be no Tampa," says Holton Rasmussen, a historian with the J.C Newman Cigar Co. "St. Petersburg or Sarasota might have become a bigger city over time."

The cigar industry helped make Tampa an early center of diversity.

"Certainly for Florida," says Charles Groh, Resident historian at the Henry B. Plant Museum. "The fact that we have Cubans, Spanish, Italians, and many other cultures defines the character of our city."

The J.C. Newman Cigar Co. program was one in a series of free events during Archive Awareness Week leading up to Tampa’s 136th birthday on Saturday, July 15.