On Christmas Day, 1835, Major Francis Langhorne Dade and his command of 111 men bivouacked near here by Fort King Road, which stretched 125 miles from Fort Brooke (Tampa) to Fort King (Ocala). Three days later, at a point about twenty miles north of their Christmas campsite, Major Dade and all but four of his men died in an ambush by Seminoles resisting removal to the West. This battle largely precipitated the Second Seminole War.