St. Augustine's Early History
Founded in 1565, St. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied settlement of European origin in the United States. Forty-two years before the English colonized Jamestown and fifty-five years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, the Spanish established St. Augustine.
St. Augustine can boast that it contains the only urban nucleus in the United States whose street pattern and architectural ambiance reflect Spanish origins. Vestiges of the First Spanish Colonial Period (1565-1764) remain today in St. Augustine in the form of the town plan originally laid out by Governor Gonzalo Méndez de Canzo in the late sixteenth century and in the narrow streets and balconied houses that are identified with the architecture introduced by settlers from Spain. Throughout the modern city and within its Historic Colonial District, there remain thirty-six buildings of colonial origin and another forty that are reconstructed models of colonial buildings.
Historians credit Juan Ponce de Leon, the first governor of Puerto Rico, with the discovery of Florida in 1513. While on an exploratory trip, he sighted the eastern coast of Florida on Easter Sunday, which fell on March 27 that year. Ponce de Leon claimed Florida for the Spanish Crown and named it Florida after the Easter season, known in Spanish as PASCUA FLORIDA. This newly claimed territory extended north and west to encompass most of the known lands of the North American continent that had not been claimed by the Spanish in New Spain (Mexico and the Southwest).
In the following half century, the government of Spain launched six expeditions attempting to settle Florida; all failed. In 1564 French Huguenots (Protestants) succeeded in establishing a fort and colony near the mouth of the St. Johns River at what is today Jacksonville. This settlement posed a threat to the Spanish fleets that sailed the Gulf Stream beside the east coast of Florida, carrying treasure from Central and South America to Spain. As Don Pedro Menéndez de Avilés was assembling a fleet for an expedition to Florida, the French intrusion upon lands claimed by Spain was discovered. King Philip II instructed Menéndez, Spain's most capable admiral, to remove this French threat.
On September 8, 1565, Menéndez set foot on the shores of Florida. In honor of the saint whose feast day fell on the day he first sighted shore, Menéndez named the colonial settlement St. Augustine. Menéndez quickly and diligently carried out his king's instructions, removing the French garrison and consolidating Spain's authority on the northeast coast of Florida. St. Augustine was to serve two purposes: as a military outpost for the defense of Florida, and a base for Catholic missionary settlements throughout the southeastern part of North America.
English pirates and corsairs pillaged and burned the town on several occasions in the next century. Clashes between the Spaniards and the British became more frequent when the English colonies were established in the Carolinas, and later, in Georgia. The Spanish moved to strengthen their defenses, beginning in 1672 construction of a permanent stone fortress. The Castillo de San Marcos was completed late in the century, just in time to meet an attack by British forces from the Carolinas in 1702. Unable to take the fort after a two-month siege, the British troops burned the town and retreated. In 1740, an even stronger attack was mounted by the Governor of the British colony of Georgia, General James Oglethorpe. He also failed to take the fort.
The Treaty of Paris in 1763, ending the French and Indian War, gave Florida and St. Augustine to the British. St. Augustine came under British rule for the first time and served as a pro-British colony during the American Revolutionary War. A second Treaty of Paris (1783), returned Florida to Spain as a reward for Spanish assistance to the Americans in their war against England.
Upon their return, the Spanish found that St. Augustine had changed. Settlers from a failed colony in New Smyrna (south of St. Augustine) had moved to St. Augustine in 1777. This group, known collectively as Minorcans, included settlers from the western Mediterranean island of Minorca. Their presence in St. Augustine forever changed the ethnic composition of the town.
During what historians call the Second Spanish Period (1784-1821), Spain suffered the Napoleonic invasions at home and struggled to retain its colonies in the western hemisphere. Florida no longer held its past importance to Spain. The expanding United States, however, regarded the Florida peninsula as vital to its interests. The Adams-Onîs Treaty, negotiated in 1819 and concluded in 1821, peaceably turned over to the United States the Spanish colonies of East and West Florida and, with them, St. Augustine, thus ending St. Augustine's colonial period.