Tampa is a city in and the county seat of Hillsborough County, Florida, United States located on the west coast of Florida on Tampa Bay, near the Gulf of Mexico. The city had a population of 346,037 in 2011.The current location of Tampa was once inhabited by indigenous peoples of the Safety Harbor culture, most notably the Tocobaga and the Pohoy, who lived along the shores of Tampa Bay. It was explored by Spanish explorers in the 16th century, resulting in brief and violent conflicts with the native peoples and the introduction of European diseases, which wiped out the original native cultures over the next few decades. While Spain claimed Florida as part of New Spain, it did not found a colony in the Tampa area, and there were no permanent American or European settlements within today's city limits until after the United States had acquired Florida from Spain in 1819. In 1824, the United States Army established a frontier outpost called Fort Brooke at the mouth of the Hillsborough River, near the site of today's Tampa Convention Center. The first civilian residents were pioneers who settled near the fort for protection from the nearby Seminole population, and the small village was first incorporated as "Tampa" in 1849. The town grew slowly until the 1880s, when railroad links, the discovery of phosphate, and the arrival of the cigar industry jump-started its development, helping it to grow from a quiet village of less than 800 residents in 1880 to a bustling city of over 30,000 by the early 1900s.