Juan Ponce de León[a] (c. 1474 – July 1521[6]) was a Spanish explorer and conquistador known for leading the first official European expedition to Puerto Rico in 1508 and Florida in 1513.

While he grew quite wealthy from his plantations and mines, he faced an ongoing legal conflict with Diego Colón, the late Christopher Columbus's son, over the right to govern Puerto Rico.

[8] Ponce de León returned to Spain in 1514 and was knighted by King Ferdinand, who also reinstated him as the governor of Puerto Rico and authorized him to settle Florida.

He returned to the Caribbean in 1515, but plans to organize an expedition to Florida were delayed by the death of King Ferdinand in 1516, after which Ponce de León again traveled to Spain to defend his grants and titles.

[9] In March 1521, Ponce de León finally returned to Southwest Florida with the first large-scale attempt to establish a Spanish colony in what is now the continental United States.

[37] In 1502 the newly appointed governor, Nicolás de Ovando, arrived in Hispaniola, with the Spanish Crown expecting him to bring order to a colony in disarray, a task in which he succeeded.

In 1504, when Taínos overran a small Spanish garrison in Higüey on the island's eastern side, Ovando assigned Ponce de León to crush the rebellion.

He found a ready market for his farm produce and livestock at nearby Boca de Yuma where Spanish ships stocked supplies before the long voyage back to Spain.

[43] The large stone house Ponce de León ordered built for his growing family still stands today near the city of San Rafael del Yuma; he named it Salvaleón after his grandmother's estate in Castile.

[47] He writes in detail of the Probanza de Juan González, according to which a temporary base was established on the west coast of Puerto Rico near the Bay of Añasco in 1506.

In 1508, Ferdinand II of Aragon gave permission to Ponce de León for the first official expedition to the island, which the Spanish then called San Juan Bautista.

Ponce de León led a small exploratory party to Puerto Rico in 1508 that found placer deposits of gold in the western end of the island.

Ponce put those assigned to his personal encomienda, Hacienda Grande, to work searching for gold in the Toa Valley just east of San Juan.

By June 1511, the Taínos, pushed to the limits of their endurance, began a short-lived rebellion, which was forcibly put down by Ponce de León and a small force of troops armed with crossbows and arquebuses (long guns).

[59][60] Even as Ponce de León was settling the island of San Juan, significant changes were taking place in the politics and government of the Spanish West Indies.

Ponce de León readily agreed to a new venture, and in February 1512 a royal contract was dispatched outlining his rights and authorities to search for "the Islands of Beniny".

[70] The only near contemporary description known for this expedition comes from Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, a Spanish historian who apparently had access to the original ships' logs or related secondary sources from which he created a summary of the voyage published in 1601.

[77] Some believe that Ponce came ashore even farther south near the present location of Melbourne Beach,[80][81] a hypothesis first proposed by Douglas Peck, an amateur historian who attempted to reconstruct the track of the voyage sailing in his 33-foot Bermuda-rigged sailboat.

Samuel Turner dismisses this theory,[82] pointing out that Ponce's fleet encountered a storm on 30 March, sailing in it for two days, with no indication in Herrera of the wind direction or how strong it was, and that this fact complicates any attempt to reconstruct the voyage (not to mention that Peck's boat was nothing like the Spanish ships).

On 2 April, after the weather improved, Ponce's pilot Anton de Alaminos took a navigational fix by the sun at noon in nine fathoms of water with a quadrant or a mariner's astrolabe, and obtained a reading of 30 degrees, 8 minutes of latitude, the coordinate recorded in the ship's log when it was closest to the landing site, as reported by Herrera (who had the original logbook) in 1601.

[74][83] This latitude corresponds to a spot north of St. Augustine between what is now the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve and Ponte Vedra Beach.

[85] Eventually they found a gap in the reefs and sailed "to the north and other times to the northeast" until they reached the Florida mainland on 23 May, where they encountered the Calusa, who refused to trade and drove off the Spanish ships by surrounding them with warriors in sea canoes armed with long bows.

[93] Another piece of evidence that others came before Ponce de León is the Cantino Map from 1502, which shows a peninsula near Cuba that looks like Florida's and includes characteristic place names.

The Casa took detailed notes of his discoveries and added them to the Padrón Real, a master map which served as the basis for official navigation charts provided to Spanish captains and pilots.

[101] During his stay in Spain, a new contract[102] was drawn up for Ponce de León confirming his rights to settle and govern Beniny and Florida,[103] which was then presumed to be an island.

In addition to the usual directions for sharing gold and other valuables with the king, the contract was one of the first to stipulate that the Requerimiento was to be read to the inhabitants of the islands prior to their conquest.

He did receive assurances of support from Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, the regent appointed to govern Castile, but it was nearly two years before he was able to return home to Puerto Rico.

In early 1521, Ponce de León organized a colonizing expedition consisting of some 200 men, including priests, farmers and artisans, 50 horses and other domestic animals, and farming implements carried on two ships.

Ponce de León was mortally wounded in the skirmish when, historians believe, an arrow poisoned with the sap of the manchineel tree struck his thigh.

[108] Inscribed on the side panel of the altar-tomb in his mausoleum are these words in Latin: "MOLE SVB HAC FORTIS REQVIESCVNT OSSA LEONIS OVI VICIT FACTIS NOMINA MAGNA SVIS" ("Under this structure rest the bones of a lion, more for his great deeds than for his name").