Tampa ( /ˈtæmpə/) is a city in the U.S. state of Florida. It serves as the county seat for Hillsborough County.The current location of Tampa was once inhabited by various indigenous cultures, most recently the Tocobaga. It was spotted by Spanish explorers in the early 16th century, but there were no permanent American or European settlements in the area until 1824, when the US Army established a frontier outpost called Fort Brooke at the site of today's Tampa Convention Center. The village of Tampa began as a small group of pioneers who settled near the fort for protection from the Seminole population in the area.Today, Tampa is a part of the metropolitan area most commonly referred to as the Tampa Bay Area. For U.S. Census purposes, Tampa is part of the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Florida MSA. The four-county area is composed of roughly 2.7 million residents, making it the second largest metropolitan statistical area (MSA) in the state, and the fourth largest in the Southeastern United States, behind Miami, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta.Tampa has a number of sports teams, such as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the NFL, the Tampa Bay Lightning of the National Hockey League, the Tampa Bay Storm of the Arena Football League and the FC Tampa Bay Rowdies of the North American Soccer League (2010). The Tampa Bay Rays in Major League Baseball, are actually based in neighboring St. Petersburg, Florida.In 2008, Tampa was ranked as the 5th best outdoor city by Forbes.