Following Florida’s transition to a U.S. territory in 1822, the gradual arrival of settlers led to escalating tensions with the Seminole Indians, the long-standing inhabitants of the region. The Seminole tradition of harboring runaway slaves further fueled the conflict.

By the 1830s, the situation reached a critical juncture. The Treaty of Payne’s Landing in 1832 proposed the relocation of the Seminole people beyond the Mississippi to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma. However, many Seminoles adamantly resisted this directive.

Faced with the threat of coerced removal by the federal government, dissenting Seminoles opted to defend their land.

On December 28, 1835, troops led by Brevet Major Francis Langhorne Dade, comprising 107 officers and men departing from Fort Brooke on Tampa Bay en route to fortify Fort King near present-day Ocala, were ambushed by 180 Seminole warriors in a pine forest near present-day Bushnell, approximately 50 miles from their destination.

Virtually all the soldiers perished, with only three surviving, while a mere six warriors were casualties in the engagement. The infamous Dade Massacre, also known as Dade’s Battle of 1835, reverberated throughout the nation, signaling the onset of the protracted Second Seminole War, the most enduring and expensive Native American conflict in U.S. history.

In 1921, the Florida Legislature allocated resources to preserve the battlefield as a tribute to the past.