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The State of Florida is located in the southeastern region of the United States. Most of the state is a large peninsula with the Gulf of Mexico on its west and the Atlantic Ocean on its east.
During the late 19th century, Florida started to become a popular tourist destination as railroads expanded into the area. Railroad magnate Henry Plant built a luxury hotel in Tampa, which later became the campus for the University of Tampa. Henry Flagler built the Florida East Coast Railway from Jacksonville to Key West and built numerous luxury hotels along the route, including in the cities of St. Augustine, Ormond Beach, and West Palm Beach.
Florida's first theme parks emerged in the 1930s and include Cypress Gardens (1936) near Winter Haven and Marineland (1938) near St. Augustine. Walt Disney chose Central Florida as the site of his planned Walt Disney World Resort in the 1960s and began purchasing land. In 1971, the first component of the resort, The Magic Kingdom, opened and began the dramatic transformation of the Orlando area.
As settlement increased, pressure grew on the United States government to remove the Indians from their lands in Florida. To the chagrin of Georgia landowners, the Seminoles harbored and integrated runaway blacks, and clashes between whites and Indians grew with the influx of new settlers. In 1832, the United States government signed the Treaty of Payne's Landing with some of the Seminole chiefs, promising them lands west of the Mississippi River if they agreed to leave Florida voluntarily. Many of the Seminoles left at this time, while those who remained prepared to defend their claims to the land. White settlers pressured the government to remove all of the Indians, by force if necessary, and in 1835, the U.S. Army arrived to enforce the treaty.
The Second Seminole War began at the end of 1835 with the Dade Massacre, when Seminoles ambushed Army troops marching from Fort Brooke (Tampa) to reinforce Fort King (Ocala), killing or mortally wounding all but one of the 108 troops. Between 900 and 1,500 Seminole Indian warriors effectively employed hit and run guerrilla tactics against United States Army troops for seven years. Osceola, a charismatic young war leader, came to symbolize the war and the Seminoles after he was arrested at truce negotiations in 1837 and died in prison less than a year later. The war dragged on until 1842. The U.S. government is estimated to have spent between US$20 million and US$40 million on the war, at the time an astronomical sum. Almost all of the Seminoles were forcibly exiled to Creek lands west of the Mississippi; about 300 were allowed to remain in the Everglades.
On March 3, 1845, Florida became the 27th state of the United States of America. Almost half of the state's population were black slaves working on plantations.
The seal features a Seminole Native American woman spreading flowers in the foreground, a palmetto palm, which is the Florida State Tree, along a shoreline. In the background there is a steamboat set against the sun on the horizon with rays of sunlight extending into the sky. The seal is encircled with the words "Great Seal of the State of Florida", and "In God we Trust".
