St. Augustine, Florida

This week we are headed to sunny Florida! St. Augustine was founded on May 8, 1565, and remains the oldest continuously occupied settlement of European and African-American origin in the United States.

Below is a copy of the townsite plat of St. Augustine. This townsite plat, written in Spanish, was approved on April 25, 1788. If you look at the bottom right corner of the plat, you can see Castillo De San Marcos. On the  GLO website , users are able to toggle between the original townsite plat and the copy of the townsite plat.

After the end of the Civil War, St. Augustine was a crumbling old Spanish town until about 1885 when Henry Flagler, a partner of the Standard Oil Company, decided to turn the town into a winter resort, which would soon become the winter tourist mecca of the United States. He own a railroad company that linked the most populous east coast cities to St. Augustine, and in 1887 his company began construction on two large ornate hotels with a third built shortly thereafter that was planned and started by a different builder. Flagler's architecture style was often used throughout Florida as other cities were being built.

The restoration of St. Augustine began in 1935 and was continued in 1965, the 400th anniversary of St. Augustine, with the cooperation of the State of Florida to restore parts of the colonial city. The restoration preserved 36 remaining buildings from the colonial era and reconstructed nearly 40 additional colonial buildings that once disappeared. In 2001, King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain visited the city in large part due to the restoration efforts.

During the Spaniards' first century in St. Augustine, they were victims of many enemy attacks, which lead the governor of the Florida colony to write to officials in Spain requesting funds to build a permanent defense system. The Spanish crown then approved plans to build a stone fortress, and in 1672 construction of Castillo de San Marcos began. Castillo De San Marcos was built by the Spanish to protect Spain's settlement in St. Augustine and is the oldest surviving fortress in the United States.

In 1924, the fort was established as Marion National Monument, and was later renamed in 1942 to Castillo de San Marcos National Monument.

To learn more about the unique history of the fort and take a virtual tour, check out the National Park Service's website.