Temple Terrace is a city in northeastern Hillsborough County, Florida, United States, adjacent to Tampa. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 26,690. It is the third and smallest incorporated municipality in Hillsborough County, after Tampa and Plant City. Incorporated in 1925, the community is known for its rolling landscape, bucolic Hillsborough River views, and sand live oak trees; it is a Tree City USA. Originally planned in the 1920s as a Mediterranean-Revival golf course community, it is one of the first such communities in the United States. It is part of the Tampa–St. Petersburg–Clearwater Metropolitan Statistical Area, more commonly known as the Tampa Bay area.
Temple Terrace was named for the then-new hybrid, the Temple orange also called the tangor. It is a cross between the mandarin orange—also called the tangerine—and the common sweet orange; it was named after Florida-born William Chase Temple, one-time owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates, founder of the Temple Cup, and first president of the Florida Citrus Exchange. Temple Terrace was the first place in the United States where the new Temple orange was grown in large quantities. The "terrace" portion of the name refers to the terraced terrain of the area by the river where the city was founded. One of the original houses also had a terraced yard with a lawn sloping, in tiers, toward the river.
