The Soviet Union's successful launch of Sputnik in October 1957 set off a space race that pulled and pushed the Tampa Bay area into the high-stakes contest.

Americans reacted in disbelief and anger while the Russians enjoyed their hour in the sun. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, the blunt-spoken, 5-foot-5, 200-pound survivor of Stalinist purges, challenged the United States to a "rocket contest," promising to blot the skies with nuclear-tipped guided missiles.

U.S. Sen. John Butler, R-Md., declared planetary war.

"I would like to see our armed forces shoot down Sputnik," he said. "We just say to them, 'You put 'em up; we'll shoot 'em down!'"

That the United States lacked a weapon to destroy satellites did not seem to matter.

On the local scene, desperate times called for curious measures. The Manatee County Commission acted before the month was out. Certain that Sputnik represented the first salvo in the Battle of Armageddon, commissioners voted to make Oneco the county seat should the Russians drop a hydrogen bomb on Bradenton. Should both cities be destroyed, Myakka would become the county seat.

On Dec. 16, 1957, the St. Petersburg Times proposed building "under-bay tunnel bomb shelters" to protect the population from nuclear annihilation. The tunnels would also alleviate traffic jams.

The Greatest Show In Space?

In Tampa, help came from a veteran space traveler.

Florida had long served as a favorite home for circus performers. The Zacchini family, which had resided in Tampa since the 1930s, defined the glamour and danger of the big top.

In Cairo, Egypt, in 1922, family patriarch Edmondo Zacchini survived a feat that electrified audiences. He became literally and figuratively a "human cannonball," capable of soaring 100 feet through the air.

On Dec. 7, 1957 - the anniversary of Pearl Harbor - Zacchini's brother, Hugo, offered to give to the U.S. government the family's secret of propulsion.

"I guarantee I can send a 100-pound weight up to 80,000 feet using my secret," he said.

He accused Russian spies of stealing his secrets.

Florida Gov. LeRoy Collins believed Sputnik represented a wake-up call, but he urged a different response: He pleaded for more math and science courses in state high schools.

Collins' urgings proved prophetic. Sputnik's greatest legacy was an educational revolution in the United States. Congress authorized massive spending to improve math, science and foreign language instruction.

Orange Groves To Nuclear Triggers

The space race also stimulated an arms race. President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles promoted a policy of brinkmanship based upon the threat of "massive retaliation." The military-industrial complex was born.

The arms race altered the geography of some unlikely places. Orange groves and cattle ranches were the defining characteristics of central Pinellas County.

"A handful of homes dotted the land between Park Boulevard and Ulmerton Road," writes James Schnur, librarian of the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. "Jay B. Starkey actually had cattle and owned much of the land in the area."

Then came General Electric, Honeywell and Sperry Rand - much to the amazement of Tampa and Hillsborough County, which had its own industrial park on the site of old Henderson Field, south of the emerging USF campus on Fowler Avenue. While Tampa's industrial park recruited Schlitz Brewery and a car battery factory, Pinellas was luring the type of industries and workers the state and region desperately needed.

One of those new employees was Gus Stavros. A World War II veteran who had fallen in love with Florida during his training in Gainesville, Stavros accepted an offer from Sperry Microwave in Oldsmar in 1958 and moved his family from Ohio to Clearwater.

"After spending time in Ohio - where the sun might shine two days each winter - it was a dream to move to the land of sunshine," said the businessman and philanthropist.

The eternal sunshine coexisted with Cold War anxieties and the industries they spawned. In 1959, Pinellas County celebrated its newfound prosperity with a new county seal. It displayed a golfer, fisherman and diver - and a diagram of the atom.

Gary R. Mormino, director of the Florida Studies Program at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, can be reached at gmormino@stpt.usf.edu.