Most people who live in Valrico have no idea they are walking on ground that has been settled, abandoned, rebuilt, wiped out, and rebuilt again for over 150 years. The story of this community is not a straight line. It is a series of booms and busts that somehow, against the odds, produced one of the most desirable suburban communities in Tampa Bay.

Here is the full history.

Before It Was Valrico: Long Pond and the Plantation Era

Before the Civil War, the area we now call Valrico was known as Long Pond, named for the body of water we know today as Lake Valrico. The land was dominated by cotton plantations worked by enslaved people, owned by families including the Spencers, Clarks, and McKays. After the war, the plantations were broken up and the area was sparsely settled for decades. By the 1880s, Long Pond was little more than a scattering of homesteads surrounded by Florida wilderness.

A Professor Names a Town: 1880s-1890s

Everything changed when William G. Tousey arrived. Tousey was a philosophy professor from Tufts College in Massachusetts who purchased property in the Long Pond area in the late 1880s. He renamed the settlement Valrico, an invented Spanish word combining "val" (valley) and "rico" (rich). The translation, "rich valley," was aspirational. There is no valley here. There never was. But Tousey saw potential in the fertile soil and the coming railroad.

In 1890, the Florida Central and Peninsular Railroad completed its line through the area, establishing a depot and post office. Valrico was officially on the map. Tousey became a full-time promoter, convincing others to relocate from the Northeast, platting streets, and opening retail stores and a bank. He even had a golf course in the original town plans.

By 1893, Valrico had a population of about 100. Mr. Bryan built a steam mill near the depot for sawing stove wood. For a brief moment, it looked like Valrico was going to take off.

The First Bust: The Freezes of 1894 and 1895

Florida's citrus industry was booming, and Valrico's growers were part of it. Then came the catastrophic freezes of 1894 and 1895, which wiped out citrus groves across the state. Tousey's nursery was destroyed. The community's agricultural foundation collapsed. Tousey eventually left, and his property was sold off. The population plummeted. By 1911, only 50 people lived in Valrico.

The Rebuilders: 1910s

Valrico did not die. Between 1910 and 1914, a new wave of settlers arrived. The Hamner, Miller, Hunter, Van Sant, Humbird, and Phipps families relocated to the area and began rebuilding. W.F. Miller emerged as the key figure, leading improvement projects along Hopewell Road (which would later become State Road 60, the main artery through Valrico to this day).

In 1912, Lovett Brandon erected Valrico's first general store. The following year, Miller organized the Valrico Improvement Association, which raised $3,500 by subscription to build the Valrico Civic Center in 1915. That building still stands today at 506 Fifth Street as the James McCabe Theater, home of the Village Players community theater and a Hillsborough County Historic Landmark. It is the only surviving commercial structure from Valrico's original boom era.

Local clay was used to make Valrico brick, which was used to construct both the civic center and a bank building in 1916. The Fugazzi Brothers, a Cincinnati-based company, and the Florida Citrus Exchange opened packing plants near the depot. For the first time in a decade, Valrico had actual commerce.

The Valrico Improvement Association, which at one point had 185 members, also helped build the Van Sant Elementary School and petitioned the county to pave roads to Brandon, Plant City, and Tampa. A rural mail route was established in 1915, with mail carried by horse and buggy.

The Second Bust: The Crash of 1929

Florida's land boom of the 1920s brought speculation and growth across the state, but Valrico could not survive the stock market crash of 1929. Nearly every business shut down. The two citrus packing plants and the Porter general store were the only enterprises left standing, surviving off truck farmers and citrus growers in the surrounding area. Eventually, even the packing plants closed. Many residents packed up and moved back north.

By 1935, Valrico's population had crept back to about 100. It stayed that way for nearly two decades.

The Road That Changed Everything: 1950s

The turning point came in the mid-1950s when State Road 60 was paved and connected to Adamo Drive in Tampa. For the first time, Valrico had a direct, paved road link to a major Florida city. Tampanians who wanted a suburban or rural lifestyle could now live in Valrico and commute to work.

This single infrastructure decision transformed Valrico from a dying agricultural hamlet into a bedroom community. Growth was slow but steady through the 1960s and 1970s. Along Mulrennan Road, south of SR-60, some of Valrico's first larger subdivisions appeared between the late 1960s and early 1980s.

The Bloomingdale Boom: 1979-Present

The real explosion came in 1979 when construction began on the Bloomingdale development east of Bell Shoals Road. Between 1979 and 1989, nearly 4,000 homes were built in the Bloomingdale area alone. Today, Bloomingdale encompasses over 32 individual subdivisions and approximately 5,200 homes, making it the largest neighborhood in Hillsborough County.

Through the 1990s and 2000s, subdivision after subdivision filled in the land between SR-60 and the Alafia River. River Hills Country Club opened in the late 1980s as Valrico's guard-gated golf community. The Buckhorn corridor developed along Buckhorn Road. Canterbury Oaks, Brentwood Hills, Twin Lakes, and dozens of other communities transformed former cow pastures and citrus groves into neighborhoods.

The 2000 census counted 6,582 people in Valrico. By the 2010 census, that number had skyrocketed to 35,545. The 2020 census recorded 37,895, and current estimates put the population above 38,000.

The Valrico That Stands Today

Valrico in 2026 is unrecognizable from the Long Pond settlement of the 1880s, but traces of the past remain if you know where to look. The original town grid still exists off Valrico Road, just north of SR-60. Oak-lined streets laid out over a century ago run in a quiet grid near Lake Valrico. The James McCabe Theater still hosts community theater productions in the 1915 civic center building, complete with stray cats on the front porch and the persistent rumor that the building is haunted.

The community is primarily residential. SR-60 serves as the main commercial corridor with Publix, Walmart, restaurants, and Valrico Commons. The Bloomingdale corridor along Bloomingdale Avenue has its own commercial node. A 38,000-square-foot Whole Foods Market is currently under development at the Lithia Crossing plaza on Lithia Pinecrest Road, which will be the first Whole Foods on the east side of Tampa Bay, a signal of how far this community has come from its cotton plantation roots.

Valrico's schools are among the best in Hillsborough County. Newsome High School and Bloomingdale High School drive a price premium on homes in their attendance zones. The school system is the single biggest factor in why families pay more to live in Valrico than in comparable homes in Brandon or Riverview.

The community has never incorporated as a city. It remains an unincorporated census-designated place in Hillsborough County, governed by the county commission. There is no Valrico mayor, no Valrico city council, no Valrico police department. Services are provided by Hillsborough County and the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.

What the Numbers Tell Us

A few facts that put Valrico in perspective:

The population went from 50 people in 1911 to nearly 38,000 in 2020. The community covers 14.2 square miles with 13.8 square miles of land and 0.42 square miles of water. There are 14,347 housing units and 13,708 households. The homeowner vacancy rate is just 1.8%. The median home price runs around $430,000 as of early 2026. About 23% of the workforce works from home, one of the highest rates in the country.

What's Next for Valrico

The Whole Foods development at Lithia Crossing is the most visible sign of where Valrico is heading: from a suburban bedroom community into a more self-contained destination with premium retail, dining, and services. Limited buildable land means Valrico will not see the kind of mass construction happening in Riverview and Wimauma. Growth will come through redevelopment, infill, and rising property values rather than new subdivision sprawl.

The Lithia Pinecrest Road widening project will improve traffic flow through the Buckhorn corridor and better connect Valrico to the FishHawk and Riverview areas. New commercial development continues to fill in along Bloomingdale Avenue and the SR-60 corridor.

Valrico's identity has always been defined by the families who chose to build a life here. From the cotton planters of Long Pond to the New England settlers who followed a Tufts professor's dream to the thousands of families who move in every year for the schools and the neighborhood feel, this community has survived everything Florida has thrown at it.

The name may be invented Spanish. But the valley is real, and it is rich.

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Barrett Henry is a Broker Associate with RE/MAX Collective and has been helping families buy and sell homes in Valrico for over two decades. Call (813) 733-7907 or visit nowtb.com for current Valrico listings.