Rattlesnake (former settlement)
Rattlesnake (former settlement) is a former settlement in Tampa, Florida. Absorbed settlement that grew around a rattlesnake-meat business. George End relocated from Arcadia in 1937 and developed a cannery, store, post office and snake attraction. He died from snakebite in 1944; Tampa annexed the settlement in the 1950s.
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Is Rattlesnake (former settlement) haunted?
No claims are filed here — the record keeps this place for its documented history, not for a haunting on file.
The record — long form
For about two decades there was a town named Rattlesnake on State Road 92 in Hillsborough County — a settlement built, quite literally, on canned snake. George End moved his family from Arcadia in 1937 and opened a business canning rattlesnake meat for the mail-order trade, then grew the operation into a roadside economy: the cannery, a general store, a post office, and a snake-pit attraction for passing motorists.
Documented history
The mail-order meat business was, by the Journal of Florida Studies' account, genuinely lucrative — until 1944, when End died, 'somewhat predictably,' of snakebite. The enterprise died with him. The community hung on as a place-name until Tampa annexed the settlement in the 1950s, folding it into the city it had never really left the orbit of.
Rattlesnake is filed as an absorbed settlement rather than an abandoned landscape: no ruin field survives on the old parcel, and the source notes the name still appears on certain maps. There is no paranormal claim in the record — just a documented Florida oddity whose founder's livelihood finally bit him back.
Documented history
George End relocated from Arcadia in 1937 and developed a cannery, store, post office and snake attraction. He died from snakebite in 1944; Tampa annexed the settlement in the 1950s. A documented history gives the file real substance; this entry is part of that spine. It's verified history: the dossier's load-bearing detail. The record appears in 'Ghost Towns, Vanishing Florida and the Geography of Memory'. The entry's timeline holds it; the lore holds the rest.
Verified historyJournal of Florida Studies / Christopher Strain
Sources on file
- 01Ghost Towns, Vanishing Florida and the Geography of MemoryJournal of Florida Studies / Christopher Strain · academic · A1
Field notes & open questions
The source treats this as an absorbed town, not an empty current landscape. No paranormal claim; precise former business parcel needs archival maps.