[12] While evidence suggests human occupation as far back as 500 BC, the first maps of the area date to 1542, when a cartographer from Spain labeled it "Las Islas Sabines" (which means "The Cedar Islands" in Spanish).

Followers of William Augustus Bowles, self-declared "Director General of the State of Muskogee", built a watchtower in the vicinity of Cedar Key in 1801.

[18] In 1840, General Walker Keith Armistead, who had succeeded Zachary Taylor as commander of United States troops in the war, ordered construction of a hospital on what had become known as Depot Key.

Some Seminole leaders had been meeting with Army officers at Depot Key to negotiate their surrender or a retreat to a reservation in the Everglades.

By 1860, two mills on Atsena Otie Key were producing "cedar" slats for shipment to northern pencil factories.

A town was platted on Way Key in 1859, and Parsons and Hale's General Store, which is now the Island Hotel, was built there in the same year.

With the advent of the American Civil War in 1861, Confederate agents extinguished the light at Seahorse Key and removed its supply of sperm whale oil.

The defense of Cedar Key was assigned to the Columbia and New River Rifles, two companies of the 4th Florida Infantry Regiment, under the command of Lt.

[27] Col. Smith led his two rifle companies along with one six-pounder cannon twenty miles offshore on the steamer Madison and captured the schooners after firing two warning shots.

With the recovery, Col. Smith and his men liberated fifteen Confederate sailors, recovered the vessels' valuable cargo of railroad iron and turpentine and effected the first capture of a U. S. Naval officer at sea during the war.

[4] Early in his career as a naturalist, John Muir walked 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from Louisville, Kentucky, to Cedar Key in just two months in 1867.

Muir contracted malaria while working in a sawmill in Cedar Key, and recovered in the house of the mill's superintendent.

[31] Also in 1890, the island town was affected by the reign of terror of Cedar Keys mayor William Cottrell, who took advantage of his Florida state legislature connections and the restricted one-way road access to impose his will and conduct acts of violence.

Today, only a few reminders of the original town on Atsena Otie Key remain, including stone water cisterns, and a graveyard whose headstones conspicuously date prior to 1896.

President Herbert Hoover established the Cedar Keys National Wildlife Refuge in 1929 by naming three of the islands as a breeding ground for colonial birds.

The lighthouse was abandoned in 1952, just as the tourism industry began to grow as a result of interest in the historic community, but it remains in use as a marine biology research center by the University of Florida in Gainesville.

[5][6] In 1950, Hurricane Easy, a category-3 storm with 125-mile-per-hour (201 km/h) winds, looped around Cedar Key three times before finally making landfall, dumping 38 inches (970 mm) of rain and destroying two-thirds of the homes.

Packing 115-mile-per-hour (185 km/h) winds, the storm churned for two days in the Gulf, 50 miles (80 km) to the west, battering the waterfront.

[34] After a statewide ban on large-scale net fishing went into effect July 1, 1995, a government retraining program helped many local fishermen begin farming clams in the muddy waters.

Hurricane Eta made one of its two landfalls in Florida at about 4 a.m. Thursday, November 10, 2020, near Cedar Key, as a tropical storm.

[36] On August 30, 2023, Hurricane Idalia caused significant damage to Cedar Key as it headed towards Florida's Big Bend.

[12][37] On the night of September 26, 2024, Hurricane Helene caused significant to major damage to Cedar Key as it headed towards Florida's Big Bend.

It hit close enough to Cedar Key, to bring major floods, major wind gusts, heavy rain, and storm surge levels that reached a new record 9.2 feet (2.8 m) above high tide, surpassing Hurricane Idalia's 6.8 feet (2.1 m) storm surge.

Cedar Key's importance in Florida's history, which began as far back as 1000 BC with pre-Columbian habitation of the region, was recognized on October 3, 1989, by the federal government.

The Cedar Key Museum State Park depicts the town's 19th century history and displays sea shells and Indian artifacts from the collection of Saint Clair Whitman.

The naturalist John Muir visited Cedar Key in 1867 on his historic walk from Kentucky to Florida.

He wrote: For nineteen years my vision was bounded by forests, but today, emerging from a multitude of tropical plants, I beheld the Gulf of Mexico stretching away unbounded, except by the sky.

What dreams and speculative matter for thought arose as I stood on the strand, gazing out on the burnished, treeless plain!