Some Americans believe that the first permanent European
settlement in the present-day United States was the English village at
Jamestown, Virginia. But 42 years before
the founding of Jamestown, the Spanish established a permanent settlement at
St. Augustine in Florida. It is now the
oldest city in the U.S.
The Spanish began exploring Florida in 1513, when Juan Ponce de
Leon first landed there. But Ponce de
Leon and the Spanish who followed him were searching for gold, and did not
remain. Then in the 1560s, the French
claimed control of the region. They
built a wooden fortress, Fort Caroline, on the northeast coast. King Philip II of Spain quickly sent a fleet,
commanded by Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles, to destroy the French fort. Menendez drove away the French in 1565, and
built a Spanish outpost on a nearby inlet.
He named it St. Augustine, after the saint whose feast day was August
28, the day Menendez first saw the site of the settlement.St. Augustine was attacked several times in its long history, but the residents stayed on. In 1586, St. Augustine was looted and burned by an English force led by Sir Francis Drake. Today, a few ruins still stand from St. Augustine’s earliest days. And many reconstructions show what the settlement must have been like in the 1500s.
