Prehistory and early European settlements The first people known to have entered the area of Alachua County were
Paleo-Indians, who left artifacts in the
Santa Fe River basin before 8000 BC. Artifacts from the
Archaic period (8000 - 2000 BC) have been found at several sites in Alachua County. Permanent settlements appeared in what is now Alachua County around 100 AD, as people of the wide-ranging
Deptford culture developed the local
Cades Pond culture. The Cades Pond culture gave way to the
Alachua culture around 600 AD. The
Timucua-speaking
Potano tribe lived in the Alachua culture area in the 16th century, when the Spanish entered Florida. The Potano were incorporated by the colonists in the
Spanish mission system, but new infectious diseases, rebellion, and raids by tribes backed by the English led to severe population declines. What is now Alachua County had lost much of its indigenous population by the early 18th century. In the 17th century,
Francisco Menéndez Márquez, Royal Treasurer for
Spanish Florida, established the
La Chua ranch on the northern side of what is now known as
Payne's Prairie, on a bluff overlooking the Alachua Sink.
Chua may have been the
Timucua language word for
sinkhole. Lieutenant Diego Peña reported in 1716 that he passed by springs named Aquilachua, Usichua, Usiparachua, and Afanochua while traveling through what is now
Suwannee County. In the twentieth-century,
anthropologist J. Clarence Simpson assumed the named springs were in fact
sinkholes. The Spanish later called the interior of Florida west of the
St. Johns River Tierras de la Chua, which became "Alachua Country" in English. Around 1740, a band of
Oconee people led by
Ahaya, who was called "Cowkeeper" by the English, settled on what is now Payne's Prairie. Ahaya's band became known as the Alachua Seminole. In 1774, botanist
William Bartram visited Ahaya's town,
Cuscowilla, near what Bartram called the Alachua Savanna.
King Payne, who succeeded Ahaya as chief of the Alachua Seminole, established a new town known as Payne's Town. In 1812, during the
Patriot War of East Florida, an attempt by American adventurers to seize Spanish Florida, a force of more than 100 volunteers from
Georgia led by Colonel
Daniel Newnan encountered a band of Alachua Seminole led by King Payne near
Newnans Lake. After several days of intermittent fighting, Colonel Newnan's force withdrew. King Payne was wounded in the fight and died two months later. The Alachua Seminole then left Payne's Town and moved farther west and south, but other bands of Seminole moved in. A second American expedition in 1813 of U. S. Army troops and militia from Tennessee, led by Lt. Colonel
Thomas Adams Smith, found some Seminoles, killing about 20, and burned every Seminole village they could find in the area. In 1814, a group of more than 100 American settlers moved to a point believed to be near the abandoned Payne's Town (near present-day
Micanopy) and declared the establishment of the
District of Elotchaway of the Republic of East Florida. The settlement collapsed a few months later after its leader, Colonel Buckner Harris, was killed by Seminole. The remaining settlers returned to Georgia.
Early American settlements In 1817, F. M. Arredondo received the 20-mile square Arredondo Grant in the southern part of what is Alachua County. By the time Florida was formally transferred from Spain to the United States, people from the United States and from Europe were settling in the area. Wanton's Store, near the site of the abandoned King Payne's Town, attracted settlers, primarily from Europe, who founded
Micanopy. The 1823
Treaty of Moultrie Creek required the Seminole to move a reservation south of what is now
Ocala, and the flow of settlers into the area increased. Many settlers occupied former Seminole towns, such as
Hogtown. Alachua County was created by the Florida territorial legislature in 1824. The new county stretched from the border with Georgia, south to
Charlotte Harbor. The original
county seat was Wanton's (per the store, as the name Micanopy had not been adopted). In 1828, the county seat was moved to
Newnansville, near the current site of the city of
Alachua.
Lynchings and disenfranchisement During the post-Reconstruction period, White Democrats regained control of the state legislature and worked to restore
White supremacy. Violence against Blacks, including lynchings, rose in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as Whites imposed
Jim Crow and discriminatory laws,
disenfranchising most blacks, which forced them out of the political system. Alachua County was the site of 21 documented
lynchings between 1891 and 1926. The first three documented lynchings, in Gainesville in 1891, involved two Black men and a White man, who were associated with the notorious
Harmon Murray. Ten lynchings took place in
Newberry, six of them in
a mass lynching there in 1916. The Historical Commission documented three more, including two white men.) They are working with the Historical Commission and cities to discuss how best to achieve this. A state historical marker on the Newberry Lynchings was dedicated in 2019. ==Geography==