May 16-17 St. Augustine, Florida

On Wednesday and Thursday, May 16 and 17, we visited St. Augustine, Florida. St. Augustine is the oldest city in the United States, founded in 1565! Ponce de Leon actually landed in St. Augustine in 1513 but it took 50 years and 6 attempts before a settlement actually became established. (Ponce de Leon was 4'11" tall which was tall for a man from Spain at that time and he was a good six inches taller than most of the men on his ship. The tour director pointed out a life-size statue of him in the square and I laughed because I thought it was a joke. It wasn't. He was SO little!) Spain felt that they needed this area colonized to protect their interests in the Americas, Asia and and Europe. In 1565 Spaniard Pedro Menedez (who made a huge fortune as a privateer capturing foreign shipping for money) sailed to "La Florida" (the flowers) to expel the French Protestant Huguenots who had arrived in the area in 1564. After a battle the French surrendered and were told to either become Catholics or die. Most of them died. The Spanish believed that they controlled the whole North American coast from the Hudson Bay to the Florida keys, and they did for a while. But they couldn't combat fires, hurricanes and the advances of other European nations. Eventually they surrenered the coastal areas above Florida to other European nations. Spain continued to rule Mexico and Peru.
In 1670 Charleston was settled and challenged Spain's control of the area. From 1672-1695 a massive fort was constructed using coquina (shellstone). (This was mined from an island across from the settlement and is like a big concrete block made of seashells. It gets harder the longer it is exposed to the air.) In 1702 the British tried to take the fort but only suceeded in burning down the town around it. Four Spanish warships arrived to help defend the city and the English burned their boats and fled overland back to Charleston. The Spanish rebuilt the city. There were many attacks after that and the city lived in fear of being captured. In 1740 another English army attacked the city and the ships blasted the fort for 27 days. However, the coquina seemed to just absorb the cannon balls and suffer no real damage. After 38 days the English gave up and returned home. In 1763, at the end of the Seven Years' War (French and Indian War), Spain traded St. Augustine to the English in return for Cuba, which the English had captured during the war. Most of the Spanish in St. Augustine left for Cuba. After the Revolutionary War, from 1784 to 1821, the Spanish returned to Florida after the English left but we unable to control the activities in the city. In 1819 Spain finally gave up and turned the colony over to the United States in return for the US assuming responsibility for $5,000,000 in claims of American citizens against Spain. This was the end of Spanish rule in St. Augustine. In 1821 the Spanish flag came down from the fort for the last time. The city was 256 years old. Not everyone was happy with the agreement with Spain. One Congressman argued that Florida was a place of swamps, insects and reptiles and NO one would want to settle there. The Seminole Indians of the area resisted the advance of American settlers into their territory. The US wanted to relocate the Seminoles to reservations in the west. When the war ended in 1842, many Indians were relocated. But many also hid in the swamps and stayed in Florida. Florida didn't participate too much in the Civil War, but it did seceed in 1861.
In 1869 Florida guidebooks touted the health benefits of the warm weather of Florida instead of the northeast winters. Henry Flagler, a partner of John D. Rockefeller in Standard Oil, came to St. Augustine for his honeymoon with his second wife. He decided to develop the area into a first-class winter resort for rich northerners. He wanted the land that a church was on, so he offered to build the congregation a brand new large church free of charge if they would give him the land under the old church. They did, he did. Then the Baptists asked for the same thing. He told them he wouldn't build them a church for free, but he would give them the money to build it. However, since it was right next to the church he wanted to build for him to worship in, the Baptist Church couldn't have a bell in their bell tower. In 1888, at a cost of $250,000 Flager build the Ponce de Leon Hotel with rooms for 450 guests. Rooms were $20 a night. But you couldn't book a room for just one night. The hotel was open only from January to March and you had to book the entire time at $20 a night. They were always full. It was the first hotel to have electricity, but the guests were afraid of being electrocuted when they flipped the switch to turn on the lights. Flagler solved this problem by having employees whose only job was to turn the lights of and off for the guests. Flager then went on to build the Alcazar hotel, which was only $2 a night, but had lots of activities for the guests including the largest indoor swimming pool in the world at the time, a bicycle practice yard and tennis courts. By contrast, the Ponce de Leon didn't have those amenities. People just socialized and would "see and be seen". A competitor built a beautiful hotel just across the street from the Ponce de Leon and the Alcazar. However, he was never able to get it opened because all of his furniture (which was being shipped on the railroad that Flagler was an owner of) seemed to be lost and no one could find it. The hotel owner ran out of money, sold the building to Flagler, and the furniture was located within a few days and delivered to the new hotel... Tourism is certainly still alive and well in St. Augustine!
The city has done a very nice job of keeping some of the original buildings. However, most have been destroyed by fire once or twice or three times. St George's street is very quaint and full of shops of all kinds. There is an Old Florida Museum there which is a little bit hookey but we still learned a lot. The colonists used to stuff big fabric bags with Spanish Moss to use for beds. All that is fine, except that chiggers live in the Spanish Moss. That is where the saying "Don't let the bed bugs bite" comes from. When the settlers got together to all pitch in for a "bee" they always had food and dancing when the work was done. Everyone would put their "hoe down" and have a dance. Since they didn't dance all that often, sometimes an overzealous partner would dig their heel into their partner's shin--a Shin Dig. Settlers coming into Florida came in buggies drawn by horses. The drivers would crack their whip to keep the horses moving, thus "Florida crackers".
We sure enjoyed our time here and we learned a lot. We go on to Savannah on Friday.