From 1958 to 1971, Griffin was the Director of the St. Augustine Historical Society as well as the regional archaeologist for the National Park Service.
There, in his history class, his group was assigned a project on the French and Spanish conflict at the time of the first settlement in Florida.
[2] He later went on to graduate from the University of Florida with an undergraduate degree in archaeology (at the time, no anthropology courses were offered at the school).
Griffin spent a summer at the University of Denver, where he focused on southwestern archaeology and the direct historical approach.
His master's thesis, finished in 1946, was entitled "The Upper Mississippi Occupation at the Fisher Site, Will County, Illinois."
After being hired as state archaeologist by the Florida Park Service, Griffin recruited his friend from the University of Chicago, Hale Smith, to assist him in conducting a statewide survey of prehistoric and historical sites.
On a Spanish map of 1605 the point of land that is now Tomoka State Park was clearly drawn and the location of the Timucuan Village of Nocoroco had been labeled.
[6] A year later, Griffin worked on a test excavation at San Luis de Talimali, which was the seat of the deputy governor of the Province of Apalachee.
In the summer of 1949, Griffin took a class entitled, "The Preservation and Interpretation of Historic Sites and Buildings" at American University.
During this time, Congress instated the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which greatly motivated him to start planning a new system to understand the history of the state.
From 1958 to 1971, during his employment with the National Park Service, Griffin worked on many well-known historical sites such as: "the fence line at Appomattox, a ground-level study at Manassas, an outbuilding at Yorktown, the boyhood cabin site of Booker T. Washington, and the Cubo defense line at Castillo de San Marcos in St.
[9] This “open-minded and broadly anthropological perspective on the past shaped the nature of archaeological research in Florida”.
[11] In May 1992, Griffin received an honorary degree from the University of Florida “for sustained achievements of lasting significance and value”.
She was editor on his book, Fifty Years of Southeastern Archaeology: Selected Works of John W. Griffin.