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For Clearwater and the Pinellas peninsula, the 1920s were truly roaring. The New Pavilion at Clearwater Beach attracted huge crowds and there was seldom a vacancy at the Clearwater Beach Hotel. The Sunset Hills Country Club at Tarpon Springs was one of the most popular golf courses on the Florida west coast at the time, 18 holes on 120 acres. But the 1920s were more than just fast-moving good times. Not only did the people build places of play in this boom era, they also built places of worship. The growing religious diversity of Clearwater’s population in the 1920s gave rise to a variety of churches. Calvary Baptist Church at Cleveland and Osceola Streets came to be built because Miss Elizabeth A. Whitmire, a winter resident from Greenville, South Carolina, dreamed of a church overlooking the water. She purchased the present site in 1920, pledged $117,000 for construction and then worked secretly with Pastor A.J. Kroelinger to build the church. Only Rev. Kroelinger knew the identity of the benefactress until it was made known after her death in 1928.
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In 1927, Clearwater grabbed statewide attention with completion of the “Million Dollar Causeway” from Cleveland Street to Clearwater Beach. The causeway replaced the old Rickety Bridge on which the hot Florida sun and corrosive saltwater had taken their toll.