“Three days’ journey is a place called Acuera … farther on is a town call Ocale.  It is so large and they do do extol it that I dare not repeat all that is said.  They say there are many trades among the people and an abundance of gold and silver, and many pearls… We may go hence and pass the winter at Ocale where if what be said be true, we shall have nothing to desire.”

 This letter, written by the Spanish explorer, Hernando de Soto on July 9, 1539, was the first known mention of an area know as Ocale or Ocali.  Traveling with over 600 followers, de Soto had landed near Tampa Bay and headed north to explore the land known as Florida.  He and his army remained several weeks in the Timucua Indian village of Ocali before continuing the northward journey.

 Various spellings for Ocali continued to appear in the earliest maps of Florida from the 16^th and 17^th centuries.  The area was spelled Ocali, Ocale, Ocaly, Cale and Elo-cale.  The exact translation of the name is not known.

 The first permanent settlers in the area of Marion County came around 1814 when several settled in areas near the Ocklawaha River somewhere near Lake Bryant.  In 1827 the first soldiers were sent in by the U.S. Army and erected a fort called Fort King after General William King.  It was located near the intersection of what is now Fort King Street and Southeast 36 Avenue.  General Zachary Taylor made Fort King his headquarters during the Second Seminole War.

 On March 25, 1884, the Legislative Council for the Territory of Florida approved the establishment of a new county to be know as “Marion.” Named after Francis Marion, the South Carolina hero of the Revolutionary War.  Fort King was designated as the county seat.  But since this area was still a military reservation, plans were made to located a new site for the county seat.  An area was chosen several miles west of Fort King.  The new site was on high ground and had an available water supply from a nearby spring.  On February 21, 1846, the Marion County Commissioners passed a resolution that “the county site of this country shall be known as Ocala.”

 There is no official record of why “Ocala” was chosen as the name.  The book, Ocali Country, credits someone familiar with an 1837 book, the Territory of Florida, by John Williams, as suggesting the name.  Williams had written about the Indian village discovered by the Spanish explorers: “Ocalal must have been in the neighborhood of Fort King.”  But he spelled it Ocala, not Ocali or Ocale.  And so, our city was given a name which had first been written by Hernando de Soto nearly 25 years before the founding of America’s oldest city, St. Augustine.

 Although official records of the incorporation of the city in 1868 had been lost, it was accepted that in that year the city limits were set at one thousand yards in every direction from the center of the courthouse situated on the public square with a uniform system of municipal government.  On January 28, 1885, the city charter was approved by the Florida Legislature stating in part that all ordinances passed and all acts heretofore done by and through the Mayor and Town Council were declared…”to be as legal and valid as if the record of such incorporation and reorganization had been in existence and upon record.”  The City Council had the power to provide for a police force that would consist of a Marshal and as many policemen as the City Council deem necessary.  Marshal and policemen were to be elected by the City Council for one year terms, unless sooner removed by the City Council for cause.