Fort Pierce was a significant U.S. military post in the Second Seminole War, built from palmetto logs during General Thomas S. Jesup’s winter campaign of 1837-38 on a high bluff along the western shore of the Indian River, four miles south of the old Indian River Inlet. Named for Brevet Lt. Col. Benjamin K. Pierce, it briefly served as headquarters of the Army of the South after Jesup arrived on January 14, 1838, with his staff and more than 1,000 mounted and mixed troops, including 400 troopers of the 2nd United States Dragoons, 600 Alabama and Tennessee Mounted Volunteers, and 200 sailors, regulars, and Washington City Volunteers. A nearby fresh water spring and the river helped sustain the post as troops took part in the campaign to force Florida’s Seminole Indians to emigrate west of the Mississippi River. After the first battle on the Loxahatchee on January 15, 1838, Lt. Levin Powell and his Navy force retreated here with four casualties, including their doctor, and the wounded were treated at the fort. In the Battle of the Loxahatchee on January 24, 1838, about 200 Seminoles, including Blacks, fought Jesup’s force of nearly 1,400, and nine Tennessee volunteers, two soldiers, and an unknown number of Seminoles were killed. After its early activity, soldiers at Fort Pierce settled into training, maneuvers, patrols, trail cutting, surveying and mapping, and transporting provisions to nearby forts; no battles occurred here, and the Seminoles resisted removal. Coacoochee, or Wild Cat, arranged to surrender at Fort Pierce, and mounted soldiers led by Lt. William Tecumseh Sherman escorted him and his warriors into the post before they were forcibly removed to Indian Territory; Wild Cat and his followers later moved by choice to Mexico, where he died. Fort Pierce was deactivated in February, 1842, at the end of the Second Seminole War, and it was destroyed by fire in December, 1843.