Riverview is an unincorporated census-designated place in Hillsborough County, Florida, United States. It is located south of Brandon. The population was 107,396 in the 2020 census, up from 71,050 in the 2010 census.
Many of Tampa Bay's radio and television stations broadcast from an antenna farm in the Riverview area, on Boyette Road, east of town. Riverview is home to Bell Creek Nature Preserve.
Riverview, founded in 1885 on the north shore of the Alafia River, absorbed the earlier settlement of Peru in the 1940s. Peru, established in the 1830s on the river’s south side, was one of central Florida’s oldest communities. Its name, meaning “straight part of the river,” inspired the Peruvian Mining Company, which extracted phosphate from the area. The Alafia, meaning “River of Fire,” got its name from glowing phosphorus in the riverbed.
Riverview’s first school opened in 1893 inside Peru Baptist Church. A ferry, later replaced by a repurposed bridge from Tampa, connected the two communities. Frequent relocations of the post office between the two sides caused confusion, leading to the unified Riverview name in the 1940s. Early families included the Boyettes, Symmes, and Hackneys. The community of Boyette is named after one such family. In 1921, Emmet and Myrtle Tope opened Florida’s first commercial poultry farm in Riverview.
