This 30-acre preserve includes prehistoric shell middens and a burial mound dating from 3,000 B.C. to 1,000 A.D., buildings from the homestead of John Greene Webb, and gardens from the winter estate of Mrs. Potter Palmer. Archaeological excavations by Ripley P. and Adelaide K. Bullen and others document it as one of the largest preserved prehistoric Indian village sites on Florida's west coast, where early Floridians harvested huge quantities of seafood, hunted deer and raccoon, collected native fruits and berries, made tools from shell, bone, and wood, and lived in thatched huts before abandoning the village around 1000 A.D. In 1867, John and Eliza Webb and their five children, Anna, Will, Lizzie, Jack, and Ginnie, arrived from Utica, New York, and claimed 145 acres under the Federal Homestead Act. They named their homestead Spanish Point after hearing in Key West about a high point of land extending into the bay, and over the next 43 years three generations of the Webb family cultivated citrus groves, sugar cane, and vegetable crops, built and maintained boats for transportation, and ran the region's first tourist operation, Webb Winter Resort. In 1884, the Osprey post office opened, and John Webb, the community's first postmaster, chose its name. In 1910, Mrs. Potter Palmer of Chicago purchased the site as part of her Osprey Point estate, and over the next eight years she and her two sons, Honore and Potter II, acquired some 90,000 acres in today's Sarasota County for agriculture, farming, and real estate development. Adjacent to her winter home, The Oaks, she created gardens among the prehistoric middens and pioneer-era buildings, and after her death there in 1918, her grandson Gordon operated Palmer Nurseries at the site and sponsored archaeological work by the Bullens in the early 1960s. In 1975, the property became the first nomination in Sarasota County to the National Register of Historic Places, and five years later Mrs. Palmer's heirs donated it to Gulf Coast Heritage Association, Inc., which operates it as an accredited museum.