In the Oldest [Permanent, European] Town in the U.S.

After so much work (she worked 5 shifts in 6 days) Maya was ready for a change of pace and a change of scenery. She had five days off in a row so we decided to head out of town. There are only three minor attractions left on our to-do-in-Tallahassee list anyway, so we went to St. Augustine for the weekend. It was really fun. One of the many things that is great about the internet is that you can totally plan a trip to place you’ve never been from home. We looked online for a hotel and restaurants and even printed out tickets and coupons to attractions before we ever got in the car!

St. Augustine is the oldest European town in the United States to still be inhabited. It was founded in 1565 by a force of Spanish soldiers and settlers under the command of Don Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. The Spanish history of the area goes back a little further than that, though. The place where Juan Ponce de León landed and "took possession" of the land he called La Florida (effectively all of North America) is traditionally believed to be in the vicinity of St. Augustine. We went to this supposed landing site and saw the supposed Fountain of Youth (more on that later). Menéndez's expedition was to enforce Spain’s claim to the area by establishing a town and wiping out any others who might try to settle in the area. The French had beaten the Spanish to the area and had built a settlement the year before to the north called Ft. Caroline. Menéndez wiped them out. A storm helped weaken them first. The story goes that the Spanish killed the French and threw their hacked apart bodies into the bay. The Matanzas Bay (trans: slaughter) between St. Augustine and the ocean is so called because of the event.

St. Augustine was the administrative, missionary and military capital of Florida for the next 260 years. In 1672 work began on a stone fort to better protect the area. It seems that various pirate and British attackers had burned down the pervious nine wooden forts in and around St. Augustine. Named Castillo de San Marcos, this fort is awesome. For those of you that went on Family Vacation 2007 – it was like Fort Mackinac, only even cooler. The walls are a shell limestone called coquina that tends to absorb the impact of cannon balls rather than crack. This place has never been taken in a fight! Five different flags have flown above the walls but each time it was a handover brought about by political forces elsewhere (see below). It endured a 50-day siege in 1702 and a 27-day siege in 1740. Both times the British attackers ran out of supplies first and had to retreat. All of the rooms are open and you can walk around on the gun deck and in the powder room and the chapel reading the informational plaques at your leisure. We had to get a picture of ourselves standing in front of the “execution wall.” It appears to be riddled with musket ball holes.

We also visited an area called the Old St. Augustine Village. It’s a couple of blocks that has the second and third oldest houses in the city. The oldest house in town is elsewhere. The Prince Murat House was built in c.1790 in the colonial Spanish style. It’s painted pink on the outside (not sure why) but it looks nice on the inside. It’s look inside and out is very different from other colonial houses we’ve seen. Most likely because it’s Spanish and not English like most of the other “colonial” pieces of the U.S. The house is named for Prince Achille Murat who lived there briefly in 1824. He was the Crown Prince of Napels thanks to his uncle being Napoleon. After he moved on (to Tallahassee, actually) he got into farming and ended up marrying the great grand-niece of George Washington.

All of the interesting, complicated history of Florida comes together in St. Augustine’s Plaza de la Constitution. It used to be a parade ground for the troops when the Spanish first built the town. During the Seven Years War (usually called the French and Indian War by Americans), Britain captured Cuba and Puerto Rico. In the peace treaty of 1763 the Spanish traded Florida to the British to get their islands back. The British re-purposed the plaza as a market place. A small plaque commemorates this. The plaza still works that way to some extent; there were artists selling their work the evening we were there. During the American Revolution, France and Spain took the opportunity to harass the British for their own reasons and Spain captured the Bahamas from the British. In the peace treaty of 1783 the British traded Florida to the Spanish to get their islands back. During this second period of Spanish control the plaza received its name. The Spanish established their first constitution in 1812 after throwing off control of Napoleon’s France. In St. Augustine’s plaza the almost entirely Spanish population set up a marble spire to commemorate the event and named the open space the Plaza de la Constitution. The plaza still goes by the name and the spire is still there, still written all in Spanish. Of course, when Americans took over Florida in 1819 they added their own layers of history. They used the nearby Castillo as a base in their Indian wars and as a military prison. Just east of the Spanish spire is a taller one erected in the 1880s to commemorate those who died fighting for the Confederacy. There is also a WWII monument with plaques for the Korean and Viet Nam wars attached. Today the whole plaza is a little shop-lined park in the middle of modern St. Augustine’s downtown.