Bradenton is located in the western-central part of the state of Florida and a city and seat of Manatee County that is on the southern bank of the Manatee River that is nearby the mouth of Tampa Bay that is on the northern part of Sarasota. The Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto landed in 1539 in the nearby Shaw's Point, and at present, is being commemorated by a national memorial. The area where the present-day Bradenton was founded in the 1840s and was named after Joseph Branden, who was an early settler and who built a "castle and planted sugar in 1854, wherein the remnants of the villa is still existent up to the present. The community was developed to become a winter resort and as a shipping center for the farm produce, including citrus and winter vegetables, and was then incorporated in 1903.
| Population | 51,763 (3.40%) |
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