The city was first mentioned when Hernando de Sotos landed in 1539. The city was named after its first settler, Joseph Braden, a sugar planter who built a castle-like house here in 1854. 1919 was built by the Tampa Southern Railway, a subsidiary of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, a railway line from Tampa to Palmetto, which was extended to Bradenton in 1920. The present city was formed in 1943 when Florida law united the cities of Manatee and Bradentown.