~ St. Augustine Vacation Packages - St. Augustine, Florida

In terms of being a continuously occupied settled area of European beginnings, St. Augustine can boast as being the oldest city in the United States. The city was founded in 1565 by the Spanish- a full forty-two years before the British colonized Jamestown; and over half a century before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.

The cityscape of the “old city” as it now stands, is younger than this. This can be attributed to the fact that St. Augustine had violent beginnings from which much of the earliest structures didn’t survive. The famous structure known as Castillo de San Marcos, built in the latter 1600’s, is one structure that did survive the attack of the British forces that invaded the area in 1702.

Remains from the first Spanish Colonial period (a period of 200 years stretching on from 1565) are still littered throughout the area and stand as a testament to the architecture of the original Spanish settlers. More modern buildings were built with this same original style in mind in order to compliment the original structures. Truly, St. Augustine is the only urban center in the United States that reflects a purely Spanish origin.

The discovery of Florida is generally attributed to Juan Ponce de Leon- incidentally the first governor of the island of Puerto Rico, in the year 1513. Florida was christened such by Juan Ponce de Leon because he discovered Florida on Easter Sunday of that year. The Easter season in Spanish is called “Pascua Florida”.

While Juan Ponce de Leon immediately claimed Florida for the Spanish crown, the subsequent six expeditions that were launched to settle Florida- failed miserably. Later, French Huguenots managed to construct a fort in the area that is now Jacksonville and this posed a threat to the Spanish crews carrying treasure back home to Spain.

It was not until 1565 that the Spanish voyager, Menendez, landed in Florida and named the area after St. Augustine- whose feast was celebrated that very day. Menendez, following the explicit instructions of the King, managed to defeat the French and firmly establish the Spanish presence in northeastern Florida. From then on St. Augustine was central both as a strategic military settlement, and also as a base of Catholic evangelistic efforts in the southeastern sections of North America.