[6] Spanish Admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, founder of St. Augustine, moved his initial settlement to Anastasia Island after a revolt by the Timucuan Indians in 1566.

The Spanish built a wooden watch-tower on the northern end of Anastasia Island [9] to warn the town of approaching vessels by raising signal flags.

[13] The Spanish eventually replaced the tower with a coquina structure that was converted into a lighthouse soon after Florida came into the possession of the United States[14] in 1821.

[25] Long suspected to be the remains of some form of gigantic octopus and gaining the interest of cryptozoologists, analysis from 1995[26] and 2004[27] concluded it to be whale blubber.

[32] During World War II the Coast Guard occupied the lighthouse, and other residences in Davis Shores were used as barracks for soldiers.

This rock is composed primarily of whole and fragmented shells of the donax, or coquina, clam[33] admixed occasionally with scattered fossils of various marine vertebrates, including sharks' and rays' teeth.

It is the only local natural source of stone, and was quarried by the Spanish and later the British to construct many of the buildings in St. Augustine (including the Castillo de San Marcos).