Tampa-based developers E.F. Hall and Lee B. James announced their purchase of 14,000 acres in northeastern Manatee County in November 1925.

[2] Around that time, the developers held a picnic and barbecue event open to the public to encourage prospective buyers and to allow them to view the area.

[7][1] All of this activity ended with the combination of the hurricanes of 1926 and 1928 which devastated south Florida, causing investors to withdraw from the state.

[8] In 1944, Hubert Rutland, a St. Petersburg, Florida–based businessman, began the process of buying up tax and deeds and unpaid drainage bonds on property along County Road 675 that included the former Manhattan subdivision.

[9] After being transformed into a headquarters of the ranch, the Manhattan hotel appears to have burned down in the intervening years, and any other original structures have similarly ceased to exist.