Construction on Fort King Road, first known as the Military Road, began in 1825 north from Fort Brooke at Tampa Bay. By the 1830s it had reached Fort King near present-day Ocala and assumed strategic military importance. Along this route, Dade’s Massacre occurred on December 28, 1835, when Seminoles attacked near Bushnell in Sumter County, wiped out the detachment of Major France L. Dade, and set off the Second Seminole War.