It’s April 1886 and you’re unemployed in Ybor City. You’re waiting outside a new business called Sanchez y Haya Cigar Company because they’re hiring. While you desperately need the work you see no real future in it. “Another fad that will fizzle out soon,” you think to yourself. “Cigar rolling? Here in Ybor? Please.”
Never in your (or anyone else’s) wildest dreams would you predict that 140 years later this very spot would honor the global legacy of Cigar City with the ceremonial rolling of a 140-foot cigar.
Producing over a million cigars a day by the late 1920s led to the city being known globally the “cigar capital of the world”.