St. Augustine, Florida, is the oldest continuously occupied settlement of European origin in the continental United States. Founded in 1565 by the Spanish conquistador Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, it is also claimed to be the site of the first landfall by European explorers on the continental United States. On the second of April 1513, the expedition, led by Juan Ponce de Leon, a veteran of Columbus’s second voyage of 1493, arrived off the coast of the land he named ‘La Florida’ in recognition of its verdant landscape (‘florida’ is Spanish for flower), and because it was the Easter season, which the Spaniards called ‘Pascua Florida’ (Festival of Flowers). The following day he and his men went ashore, becoming the first Europeans to walk on what is now American soil, and claimed the “newly discovered” land for Spain and the Catholic Church. The cross in the picture was erected by the Church in 2013 to mark the 500th anniversary of this event.
Uploaded 2025-01-30T15:28:15+00:00