Named by a Russian immigrant who financed the Orange Belt Railway in 1888, Odessa saw the growth of a lumber mill in the subsequent decades until it burned down in 1922. Today, open spaces where ranchers used to let their horses graze are now slowly turned into suburbs as Tampa, 25 miles south, slowly expands northward to Odessa. The white sand beaches of the Gulf Coast more than makes up for this development, and if you love manatees, you can rent a motorhome in Odessa and travel north to Crystal River, where most of them congregate in winter.