Deadman Bay, at the mouth of the Steinhatchee River, appeared on Spanish maps by the early 1500s. Spanish conquistador Panfilo de Narvaez passed through the area in 1529, followed ten years later by Hernando de Soto, who crossed the Steinhatchee River at the Falls. In 1818 General Andrew Jackson also crossed at the Falls on his way to dispatch Seminoles raiding white settlements. In 1838, during the Second Seminole War, General Zachary Taylor was sent to put down the Seminoles, and Fort Frank Brook was established up the Steinhatchee River that same year before being abandoned in 1840. In 1879 local pioneer James Howard Stephens offered land for a post office, changing the community's name from Deadman Bay to Stephensville, and in 1931 it was renamed Steinhatchee after the river. The name Steinhatchee came from the Native American "esteen hatchee," meaning river of man. The area's long human history includes prehistoric habitation dating from 12,000 BC, pirates from the 15th through 18th centuries, loggers in the 1800s, sponge divers in the 1940s and 50s, and commercial fishermen, shrimpers, and crabbers today.