SW018 Road to Ruin: Retracing the old Fort King Military Road by Strategy

Two researchers, overlaying nineteenth century survey maps, the earliest aerial photos available, and state-of-the-art geospatial imagery, documented notionally and visually the old Fort King Road -- the first purpose-built US military road through the wilderness of central Florida.

Wilderness, that is, to Americans. In fact, central Florida was the home of the Seminole Indians, who knew its environs quite well. They inhabited by treaty what had long been their land in reality.

These researchers’ book, The Fort King Road: Then and Now has been an essential reference on the key path linking Fort Brooke in modern-day Tampa to Fort King, in modern-day Ocala. It was US Army Infantry Captain Francis Langhorne Dade who had a hand in building it and in commuting along its approximately one-hundred-mile length. He did this a decade before he led his Command to its doom from an ambush by Seminole Indians in late 1835 in what became known as the Dade Massacre, near present-day Bushnell.

Called an invaluable reference for information on this long-derelict frontier highway, the Fort King Road lives on in history books and in the minds of those reading about its use in Florida’s territorial years, especially during the Second Seminole War, to which it hosted the opening of active hostilities.

With Jerry Morris, Jeff Hough wrote The Fort King Road: Then and Now. He joins us today to discuss its enduring significance to Florida’s history.

Host Patrick Swan is a board member with the Seminole Wars Foundation. He is a combat veteran and of the U.S. Army, serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Kosovo, and at the Pentagon after 9/11. A military historian, he holds masters degrees in Public History, Communication, and Homeland Security, and is a graduate of the US Army War College with an advanced degree in strategic studies. This podcast is recorded at the homestead of the Seminole Wars Foundation in Bushnell, Florida. 

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