Cortez, a census-designated place (CDP) in Manatee County, Florida, United States, is a small Gulf Coast commercial fishing village that was founded by settlers from North Carolina in the 1880s. The population was 4,121 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Bradenton-Sarasota-Venice, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Present-day Cortez was a part of the Safety Harbor culture region from about 900 CE until the 1700s. The Safety Culture people formed chiefdoms and villages along the shoreline of Tampa Bay and the adjacent Gulf of Mexico coast. Safety Harbor culture is defined by the presence of Safety Harbor ceramics in burial mounds, which have been excavated from nearby archaeological sites in present-day Manatee County. The Safety Harbor culture virtually disappeared due to disease and incursions by other Native Americans.

The Calusa people, often referred to as the “Shell Indians”, also inhabited the southwest coast of Florida. The Calusa were first recorded by Spanish explorers in 1513, but were likely living on the coast long before they were recorded doing so. The Calusa became the dominant power in the Tampa Bay area with the waning of the Safety Harbor Culture in the 1600s. The Calusa are believed to have stayed in the area until 1763 when the remaining Calusa, their numbers having already dwindled due to disease and warfare, left Florida to settle in Cuba. The Calusa are believed to have lived along inner waterways in homes built on stilts. Unlike many other tribes, the Calusa did not hunt but rather fished for subsistence. The Calusa people were prolific fishermen. The Calusa people made nets from palm tree webbing in order to catch mullet, pin-fish, pig-fish, and catfish. They used spears topped with arrowheads crafted from fish teeth and spines in order to hunt eels and turtles. Women and children of the tribe caught shellfish, including crabs, lobsters, oysters, clams, and conch. They used the shells they collected to make a variety of things such as tools, utensils, ornaments, weapons, and jewelry. The eventual demise of the Calusa people is attributed to invasions from other tribes and disease brought by Spanish and French explorers.

Cuban fishermen, or ranchos, began journeying northward in order to fish the waters of the Gulf Coast of Florida around the mid-1700s. Once the journey to Florida had been made, the ranchos would set up temporary camps where they would reside for around half a year while they fished the plentiful waters of the area. Catches were dried and salted so that they could be transported back to Cuba to be sold. This proved effective as the ranchos would return home before Lent to sell their catch when fish was in high demand. The waters surrounding Cuba are viable fishing waters, but they were fished heavily. The waters near the Gulf Coast of Florida were particularly appealing to the ranchos because there were not yet any permanent settlements in the area. This means that the water in the area was an untapped resource of fish, all theirs for the taking. This area was made all the more appealing because its environment was conducive to inshore net fishing (the preferred method of the ranchos).

Originally called “Hunter’s Point”, Cortez was settled in the 1880s by families from Carteret County, North Carolina. When a post office was established in 1888, the village needed a new name to avoid confusion with another Hunter’s Point in Florida. Although the origins of the name “Cortez” cannot be officially proven, the community may have been named after the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés. In its early days, Cortez was a fishing village so rural that it was more often reached by water than by land. The mainstay of Cortez was and still is its success in the commercial fishing industry.