Fort Hamer was a frontier military post built in 1849 during the Seminole Scare on the south bank of the Manatee River, about a mile northeast of this site, and was named for Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Hamer, who died in 1848 in the Mexican War. It included a 100 x 60-foot warehouse, an 80 x 30-foot hospital, log houses, and a hay barn, and had a garrison of 165 soldiers. The commander of Fort Brooke in Tampa considered its location greatly superior and recommended that it become the regional depot. Fort Hamer was abandoned in November 1850 after the danger of attack subsided, but in 1856, during the Third Seminole War, it was reoccupied by the Manatee Rangers, a state militia of mounted volunteers. After a Seminole war party raided Braden Castle on March 31, 1856, the Rangers tracked them to the Peace River area and killed several. A trail from Fort Brooke to Fort Hamer ended at what is now Fort Hamer Landing on the north bank of the Manatee River near Gamble Plantation, where men and horses were ferried across to the fort. Supplies reached its warehouse by steamboat and schooner and then moved east by wagon road to Forts Crawford, Green, and Myakka. These outposts formed part of a chain of forts built across the Florida peninsula in 1849-50 to separate settlers and Seminoles as pressure mounted on the Indians to emigrate. On Feb. 28, 1850, 74 Seminoles sailed from Fort Hamer to New Orleans and then to Indian Territory, receiving $15,000 in gold for migrating and $953 for their livestock. About 100 remained at the end of the Third Seminole War in the Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp, and their descendants today make up the Seminole Tribe of Florida. The site was sold to a cattleman in 1876, and in 1979 Larry Adams and Roy Jones confirmed its location by finding military artifacts and coins dated between 1835 and 1848 there.