At the end of 1824, Alachua County was organized as a political unit of the new Territory of Florida, and with the Seminole inhabitants of the Alachua region recently ordered to a reservation, land became available there for white settlers. Early in 1826, a post office called Dell's P.O. was established in the area, named for the Dell brothers, who had first visited the region during the Patriot War of 1812-14 and later returned to settle there. In 1828, the nearby settlement was officially made the Alachua County seat and named Newnansville in honor of Patriot War hero Daniel Newnan. Newnansville became the junction of several important trails through frontier Florida, including the Bellamy Road, a cross-Florida route authorized by Congress in 1824 as the first federal road in the new territory. During the Second Seminole War of 1835-42, hundreds of displaced refugee settlers were sheltered at Newnansville and at nearby Ft. Gilleland, a military post built in 1836. After the hostilities ended, Newnansville prospered as a commercial center for the expanding Middle Florida frontier, with corn, cotton, and, after the Civil War, citrus as the area's chief products. Except for a few years between 1832 and 1839, it served as the Alachua County seat until 1854, when the county's political center moved to the new railroad town of Gainesville. Over the next three decades Newnansville slowly declined in population and importance, and it was dealt a final blow in 1884 when the Savannah, Florida and Western Railroad bypassed it and the new town of Alachua grew up near the railroad. As the years passed, residents moved there or elsewhere, and by the 1970's only a few traces remained of the former community. In 1974, the Newnansville Town Site was placed on the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district in recognition of the importance of that nineteenth century community.