In 1910, two Florida newspapers, the "Leesburg Commercial" and the "St. Lucie Tribune", encouraged legislators to place a marker on the site of the massacre. At the state level, an attempt to create a memorial park on the site of the Dade Massacre was made in the early 1920s. Before his term in the Florida Legislature, Lake County judge J. C. B. Koonce held pre-trial hearings at the park's site. Fascinated by the battle, Lake County judge Koonce began to develop the area into a park in 1908. In 1921, as the Sumter County representative in the Florida House, Koonce, state senator W. M. Igou of Eustis, state representative L. D. Edge of Groveland, state representative T. G. Futch of Leesburg, and United States Senator Duncan Fletcher urged the Florida legislature to preserve the site.