What’s the history of Tampa’s Beer Can Island? We found out.

TAMPA — It was a heck of a date, Walter Romeo recalled with a laugh, but it might have been better if he had known the truth about their destination.

A teenager at the time, Romeo, now 75, had a crush on a neighborhood girl. Of course he said yes when asked to go boating to a local island with her and another teenage couple.

He could’ve bragged of a link to their destination.

“My uncle owned it,” he said. “She might have been impressed. But I had no idea at the time.”

They’d gone to Pine Key — the popular boating spot best known as Beer Can Island.

It’s now for sale by owners, who have publicly sparred with Hillsborough County over what could be done on the island nestled between Apollo Beach and MacDill Air Force Base.

But past owners, eccentric and adventurous, kept a hands-off approach, so much so that few know their identities or the history of the island. Even families of past owners don’t know the full details.

Pine Key celebrates its 80th birthday this year. The Tampa Bay Times looked through land deeds and newspaper archives for the backstory of the beloved, yet mysterious, island.

The adventurer

The island was created by a state dredging project then put on sale in June 1944. The state originally gave it two names — Pine Key and Paradise Island.

In July 1944, Herman Romeo and business partner Louis Dron purchased it for $1,500.

Today, Pine Key is nine acres with another 60 acres of surrounding submerged land. That first sales deed says it measured two acres back then, plus the shoal area.

It’s unclear what the original owners intended to do with Pine Key. They owned Steamways Corp., a downtown Tampa business that built, repaired and cleaned boats from a headquarters along the Hillsborough River.

Perhaps, Romeo said, his uncle saw opportunity to expand the business to Pine Key or bought the island to develop it, like other waterfront property he owned.

Or maybe there was another financial reason. Perhaps they thought it had riches. The deed gave the men rights to petroleum, phosphate, minerals and metals discovered there. It’s unknown if any existed, but Dron was considered Tampa Bay’s treasure hunter.

From the 1920s through 1930s, Dron and a brother traveled the world in search of gold, an adventure that took them to French Guiana. There, according to one Tampa Tribune story, he “traveled deep into the jungles.”

“They paddled up broad rivers on canoes, and hacked their way, foot by foot, through the miasma of the forests. Trees and foliage were so thick they did not see the sun for days at a time,” reads another article, with yet another saying, “They encountered droves of blood sucking vampire bats, wild animals of every description and on one occasion were rescued from almost certain death by a band of escaped convicts.”

The brothers claimed to have found gold but alleged the French government refused to let them mine it. They also purportedly discovered a “tribe of white Indians,” according to news archives, that Dron believed were “remnants of a lost race.”

Dron once told a reporter that he was more comfortable in a jungle than a city.

Maybe that’s why they bought Pine Key, Romeo said.

Dron’s tales became such local legend that he was used in a print advertisement reminiscent of Dos Equis’ “Most Interesting Man In The World” commercials.

“Tampa boat builder chooses Lord Calvert,” reads the whiskey ad that includes a photograph of Dron holding a glass of the liquor proclaimed to be “the choice of men who insist on perfection.”

Herman Romeo was more conventional, choosing civic leadership, primarily through the Knights of Columbus, to adventure. “But he was a bragger,” Romeo said. “He had a real gift for gab and liked to say he owned an island but never told me more.”

Pine Key remained undeveloped under Dron and Herman Romeo.

Dron died in 1972. Nine years later, his estate sold their interest in the island to a man who only owned it for two months before selling to SanAnn Food Stores Inc., a company about which the Times could learn little.

The eccentric

In 1986, newspapers identify local attorney J. Danforth Browne as the island’s owner, along with Herman Romeo. The Times could not find a deed to back that claim, but county records say he was the trustee for the stockholders of Tampa Bay Marina, a company that shared an address and officers with SanAnn Food Stores.

That was the first time the press publicly named an owner of the island and identified it as a party spot. The articles were written because Browne, who flew fighter planes for the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II, told the U.S. Army to stop holding military drills there. The Army had used it in previous years without his permission, under the impression it was public land.

When a reporter mentioned that the island attracted hundreds of partying boaters on weekends, Browne replied that didn’t bother him as much as the military, which he feared would cause property damage.

“That really doesn’t surprise me,” said Candace Beistle, Browne’s daughter. “He was his own man with his own opinions.”

Browne, who died in 2002 when his single-engine Cessna crashed in Atlanta, was also a partier who “tucked away some money in his will for a big bash once he was gone,” the Tampa Bay Times wrote in the story about his death. “Specifically, he wanted a dancing bear.”

He didn’t get a real bear, said Beistle, 70. “It was a guy dressed up in a bear costume. JD was really one of a kind.”

She said her father rarely mentioned the island and never took her there.

“I was an adult and out of the loop,” she said. “I wish I knew more. It’s weird getting older and realizing that your trail of history is incomplete.”

Herman Romeo died in 1996 and, months later, SanAnn Food Stores Inc. acquired the remaining interest in the island from his estate. Seven years later, they sold Pine Key to Imperial Island LLC. According to county records, the company shares an address and officers with San Ann Food Stores Inc.

Imperial Island did not return calls, but the current owners say that company used Pine Key to drop sand from dredging operations at a marina in Apollo Beach.

The friends

The current owners — friends Cole Weaver, Russell Loomis, James Wester and John Gadd — purchased Pine Key in December 2017 for $63,500 and sought to become the first to make something of the island with no electricity, running water or roads. They added liquor sales, a food truck, concert stages for festivals, bathrooms, trash cans and walking paths, selling memberships with VIP privileges.

Previous owners never had bothered to have the island zoned for any use and the county now wants an official designation.

The friends wanted the zoning to allow for their business to continue. The county wants it to be a private nature preserve.

Saying they are ready to move on to other ventures, the owners put the island on the market on Feb. 15 for $14.2 million. Romeo’s uncle’s estate sold its portion for $5,000, according to the Hillsborough County Property Appraiser’s website.

“Maybe they should have held out,” Romeo laughed.

As for his date all those years ago?

“I never returned to the island,” he said, “but that one time was fun.”