America's First! History of St. Augustine

St. Augustine, Florida has long been known as the oldest city in the United States and was established almost four and a half centuries ago. It’s magnificent fort named Castillo de San Marcos has stood for over three and a half centuries and protected the city for through the ages.
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A city that is four and a half centuries old has a tremendous amount of history, so we will be hitting the main highlights. It is officially the oldest continuously occupied European city in the United States and was first settled in the late summer of 1565. The need for the St. Augustine settlement is tied into the rest of Spanish history in the New World. After Christopher Columbus’ first voyage in 1492, an explosion of exploration took place. In 1513, Juan Ponce de León discovered the Gulf Stream that flowed tightly along the Florida coast and the southern half of the modern-day United States.
In 1565, Spanish Captain General Pedro Menéndez de Avíles was tasked with setting up a colony in Florida where the jet stream was thin and close to the shoreline. They named the settlement St. Augustine because they first saw land in Florida on St. Augustine’s Day, which is August 28th. In 1562, French Explorer Jean Ribault landed at the site of modern-day Jacksonville, Florida, and in 1674, he and Huguenot settlers established Fort Caroline. Pedro Menéndez led his Spanish troops to sack Fort Caroline, thus gaining control of Florida.
The next major event happened in 1586, when English Privateer Sir Francis Drake sacked St. Augustine, and burned the town and it’s wooden fort. The city became the port of entry for the El Camino Real, or “the King’s Highway”, which was a road through northern Florida whereby Catholic missions were established. St. Augustine was sacked a second time in 1668, when English pirate Robert Searle destroyed the city.
In 1672, The Castillo de San Marcos was designed and by Ignacio Daza. In 1702, during Queen Anne’s War, Carolina Governor James Moore led troops and Indians on an attack of the Castillo. An interesting story in the early years of the fort is that of Francisco Menéndez. He was enslaved in South Carolina, and he heard that the Spanish would give freedom to any escaped slave that converted to Catholicism. Menéndez escaped to St. Augustine, abd eventually commanded the first free black settlement in North America named Fort Mosé. He set up a town for free blacks called San Agustín de la Nueva Florida, in Cuba.
In 1740, Georgia Governor James Oglethorpe laid siege to St. Augustine for about a month until Spanish reinforcements arrived from Cuba to repel the English. In the 1740s, Spain and Great Britain fought the War of Jenkins’ Ear all over the world. During the French and Indian War, France offered up their Louisiana Territory to Spain in exchange for their support. Upon hearing this, Great Britain attacked and conquered Havana, Cuba, and Manila, in the Philippines. When the war ended with the 1763 Treaty of Paris, Spain traded Florida to Great Britain in exchange for the return of Havana and Manila.
During the Revolutionary War, St. Mark was used as a prison for captured rebels and housed American leader Christopher Gadsden for forty-two weeks. About thirty-five years later, a discrepancy began to arise as to the border of the United States and Spanish owned Texas. The dispute was settled in 1821, with the Adams-Onís Treaty, which not only settled the boundary issue, but ceded Florida to the United States.
The Americans renamed it Fort Marion after the Revolutionary War hero, Francis Marion, better known as the “Swamp Fox”. St. Augustine was an import base of operation during the wars with the native tribes. During the Second Seminole War, the legendary Chief Osceola was held at Fort Marion for a time.
Early in the Civil War, Fort Marion was used as a supply warehouse and was manned by just one man, Sergeant Henry Douglas. Men from the Florida Militia went to Fort Marion to seize the canon and munitions. Upon their arrival Sgt. Douglas did not surrender the fort until the militia signed a receipt for the inventory in the fort. The Confederates abandoned the fort in March of 1862.
The years following the Civil War it served as a prison for many plains Indian tribes. Captain Richard Henry Pratt began the process of assimilation to teach the Indians to adapt to white culture. His process became the base for the Indian schools that soon popped up across the country.
The final years of Fort Marion being used as a military post was during the Spanish American War. In 1924, Fort Marion was designated as a National Monument, and in 1933, it was transferred from the Department of War to the National Park Service.
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