Existing comment:
The museum was pretty good! Among other things, it had a timeline, snippets of which are below:
1492-93 Christopher Columbus (under Spanish contract) discovers the New World by reaching the Bahamas, Cuba and Hispaniola.
1513 Ponce de Leon, of Spain, explores the coast near St Augustine and names the land "La Florida".
1565 Pedro Menendez de Aviles, of Spain, founds St Augustine and defeats the French at Fort Carolina and Matanzas Inlet.
On Sept 8 1565, with banners flying, trumpets sounding, artillery booming, and 600 soldiers and settlers cheering, Menendez set foot on the shore. In honor of the Saint whose feast day it was when he first sighted land, he named the town St Augustine.
1586 Sir Francis Drake, of England, spots the lookout tower and attacks St Augustine, burning the town. The populace fled into the woods because they were greatly outnumbered by the English.
1600-ish Diminishing supplies and increasing hostility of the Indians made life very hard for early settlers. Menendez has established other military outposts, but only St Augustine survived.
1668 English pirates sack St Augustine, but fail to capture the wooden fort.
1669 Queen Regent Mariana of Spain orders the construction of a stone fort in St Augustine.
1672-95 The Castillo de San Marcos is built, designed by Engineer Ignacio Daza, features a height of 26 feet, a beam-supported gundeck, and courtyard 155 feet square.
1682 A new engineer found that one of the bastions had been built 3 feet too low. By 1686, such mistakes were corrected. Labor for the fort included 100 Indians and Spaniards, plus a few convicts and slaves. Indian laborers got 20 cents per day; masons, $2.40; master workmen, $4,00.
1702 The English destroy the Indian missions enroute to attack St Augustine. They occupy the city and besiege the Castillo unsuccessfully. They burn the city and leave.
1740 James Oglethorpe with 2000 British troops attacks and besieges St Augustine unsuccessfully.
1763 British acquire Florida and Pensacola from Spain in exchange for Cuba. France compensates Spain with Louisiana. British reorganizes [sic] Florida into two colonies, East Florida and West Florida. St Augustine is the capital of East Florida.
1784-1821 St Augustine reverts to its former status as a military outpost dependent on the Spanish Government. When the War of 1812 breaks out between England and the US, it is feared that Spain might let England use Florida as a base of operations. Failure of Spain to control lawless Indians and escaped slaves leeds [sic] to American intervention and eventually a treaty with Spain. The territory is later annexed by the United States.
1837 Osceola, a leader of the Seminole Indians, is captured near St Augustine and imprisoned in the fort.
1845 Florida becomes a State.
1861 Florida secedes from the Union, and Confederates seize Fort Marion.
1862 Unionists reoccupy St Augustine.
1883 Henry M Flagler visits St Augustine. With the opening of his hotels, the wealthy and fashionable flock to St Augustine, turning the town into a "Southern Newport." He connected St Augustine to the North with the Florida East Coast Railway.
1888 The Ponce de Leon Hotel was built by Henry Flagler in 1888. Flagler was one of the original partners with John D Rockefeller in Standard Oil Corp, and was a multimillionaire when he arrived in St Augustine in the winter of 1883. He was so impressed with the charm and possibilities of the area, he had two huge hotels built, and Ponce de Leon and the Alcazar. |