The 1838 Seminole War Fort That Named Fort Lauderdale

The city took its name from an Army post of the Second Seminole War, raised beside the New River in 1838 and called after its commander, Major William Lauderdale (city history page).

Three posts in a row carried the major's name, by the city's count: one where the New River splits, one downstream at Tarpon Bend, and a bigger one out on the beach where Bahia Mar is now. Not one of them is left standing (city history page). The state marker for the first post records the naming directly: the new post was designated Fort Lauderdale after its commanding officer (marker 744).

The name outlived the stockades by decades. Incorporation came on March 27, 1911; today Fort Lauderdale spans roughly 36 square miles and ranks first in size among the 31 Broward County municipalities (city history page). None of the three forts survives, so the posts are recalled today by three Florida Department of State markers (state marker list).

The Army came to the New River in 1838 to seek out the Seminole leader Sam Jones and his followers, two years after the Second Seminole War reached the river settlement in January 1836 (marker 744).

People lived along the New River long before any fort. The First Fort Lauderdale marker says the Tequesta occupied camps as early as 500 BCE in the area now known as Sailboat Bend, and that by 1800 Seminole Indians and Bahamian and American settlers inhabited lands along the river (marker 744).

The war reached the New River in January 1836. After the Second Seminole War broke out, settler William Cooley's family was killed by the Indians, the marker says. Major General Thomas Jesup answered by ordering 200 Tennessee Volunteers on horseback, led by Major William Lauderdale, to ride from Jupiter down to the New River in search of the Seminoles and Sam Jones, also called Abiaca or Abiaki (marker 744).

The Tennessee Volunteers did not travel alone. Lieutenant Robert Anderson and Company D, Third Artillery, went with them, and the column followed a route later known as Military Trail (marker 744). The City of Fort Lauderdale describes the purpose of Major Lauderdale's 1838 march down the east coast in blunter terms: to capture Seminole agricultural lands and battle the elusive Indian warriors (city history page).

The first Fort Lauderdale lasted about two months: troops pitched camp where the New River forks, on its north side, on March 6, 1838, and were gone again by May 1838 (marker 744).

The marker describes the New River post as active during its short occupation. When soldiers returned in February 1839 to reestablish Fort Lauderdale, they found that the blockhouse and stockade had been burned, and they chose a site further down the river, west of Tarpon Bend, for the second fort (marker 744). The marker does not say who burned the first post, and this page does not guess.

The First Fort Lauderdale marker was placed in 2011 at 400 SW 11th Avenue and was sponsored by the City of Fort Lauderdale and the Florida Department of State (state marker list). The Tequesta camps the same marker describes were in the area now called Sailboat Bend, which the City of Fort Lauderdale protects today as the Sailboat Bend Historic District in the southwestern section of the city (historic districts page).

The second Fort Lauderdale was a two-story log blockhouse with tents, ringed by a stockade and watchtower on the New River, built in February 1839 by Company K, Third Artillery (marker 745).

Captain William B. Davidson commanded the second New River post, which stood east of the first one. A cemetery, a privy and a garden lay just outside its stockade. The marker says encounters with nearby Seminole Indians were only occasional, and that boredom, disease, insects and isolation wore down the soldiers. Officers' wives and the occasional visit by a steamer improved the social life of the fort, hunting and fishing were popular, and liquor, books and tobacco offered some diversion (marker 745).

The third and last Fort Lauderdale moved to the coast. Work began in summer 1839 on a thin strip of land between the Atlantic Ocean and New River Sound, today's Intracoastal Waterway, and had the beach post done by September 1839 (marker 745). The City of Fort Lauderdale calls it the largest of the three forts and places it at the site of Bahia Mar (city history page).

The two state markers do not agree on when the beach post began. The 1978 Indian Haulover marker says a Second Seminole War fort named for Major Lauderdale was built near Bahia Mar in 1838 and keeps it manned until the fighting stopped in 1842 (marker 110), while the 2011 marker dates the start of work on the beach fort to summer 1839. Both are Florida Department of State texts; the newer marker gives the more detailed sequence, and the difference is reported here rather than resolved.

Three Florida Department of State markers recall the Fort Lauderdale posts: The First and The Second Fort Lauderdale, both from 2011, and Indian Haulover, from 1978, at Bahia Mar (744, 745, 110).

A marker's listed location is not always the fort site. The state record gives the Second Fort Lauderdale marker's location as 630 SW 9th Avenue, yet the marker text places the fort on the north bank of the New River at approximately Southeast Ninth Avenue (marker 745). The record names SW 9th Avenue for the plaque and Southeast Ninth Avenue for the fort, and it does not explain the difference.

The beach fort site has its own later history. The Indian Haulover marker says Bahia Mar was where Indians carried canoes from New River Sound into the Atlantic; House of Refuge Number Four, built about two miles north in 1876, was moved there in 1892; the Coast Guard began using it in 1915 and made it Coast Guard Base Six in 1926; and the City of Fort Lauderdale bought the property in 1947 for a public yacht basin and park (marker 110).

The fort era is marked today by the three state markers and the Sailboat Bend area, and the History Fort Lauderdale museum at 231 SW 2nd Ave. presents the wider story of the city (museum site).

By its own account History Fort Lauderdale has run since 1962 and opens every day, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. Docents lead tours at 1, 2 and 3 pm, walking tours can be booked on request, the phone number is 954-463-4431, and visitors showing a SNAP EBT card plus photo ID get in free (museum site). Those are the museum's own figures.

The Sailboat Bend Historic District, in the southwestern section of Fort Lauderdale, holds over 550 buildings, which makes it the biggest of three local historic districts in Fort Lauderdale; the city dates the neighborhood from the early 1900s through the 1950s and calls it the oldest it has (historic districts page). Its houses are far younger than the forts, but the first marker places the Tequesta camps of 500 BCE in the same area.

Seminole life on the New River did not end with the forts. The Broward County marker list records Annie Tommie's Camp, a Panther clan camp set up about 1902 on the north fork of the New River east of the present Broward Boulevard bridge, as the last permanent Seminole camp in the City of Fort Lauderdale (state marker list). The settlement that grew after the war, from Frank Stranahan's trading post to the 1911 charter, is covered in the Fort Lauderdale history section.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against the Florida Department of State marker records for Broward County and the City of Fort Lauderdale history page.