Punta Rassa became a thriving cattle shipping town in the later 1800s. The first cattle drive to Punta Rassa had been in 1833, when P. B. Prior purchased ten cattle and some calves from Seminoles living near the Peace River in what is now Hardee County, and drove them to Punta Rassa, possibly for transport to Sanibel Island. Florida cattlemen began shipping cattle to Cuba after the end of the Third Seminole War. Shipments at first were made from Tampa, and then from Fort Ogden and Punta Gorda on the Peace River. Cattle shipments to Cuba were curtailed, but not completely stopped, by the Union blockade of Florida during the Civil War. After the war ended, shipments of cattle from the Peace River ports resumed to Cuba, to Savannah, Georgia, and to Charleston, South Carolina. Some of the cattle shipments to Cuba were made out of Punta Rassa starting in 1869, and by 1872 18,000 out of a little more than 21,000 cattle shipped from Florida to Cuba went through Punta Rassa.