[9][10] Founded in 1565 by the Spanish conquistador Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, St. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied settlement of European origin in the contiguous United States.

[14] Thus Pedro Menéndez commanded the galleons of the great Armada de la Carrera, or Spanish Treasure Fleet, on their voyage from the Caribbean and Mexico to Spain, and determined the routes they followed.

In early 1564, he asked permission to go to Florida to search for La Concepcion, the galeon Capitana, or flagship, of the New Spain fleet commanded by his son, Admiral Juan Menéndez.

The Crown eventually approached Menéndez to fit out an expedition to Florida[16] on the condition that he explore and settle the region as King Philip's adelantado, and eliminate the Huguenot French,[17] whom the Catholic Spanish considered to be dangerous heretics.

On August 28, 1565, the feast day of St. Augustine of Hippo, Menéndez's crew finally sighted land; the Spaniards continued sailing northward along the coast from their landfall, investigating every inlet and plume of smoke along the shore.

The Spanish easily overwhelmed the lightly defended French garrison, which had been left with only a skeleton crew of 20 soldiers and about 100 others, killing most of the men and sparing about 60 women and children.

[27][28] Menéndez renamed the fort San Mateo and marched back to St. Augustine, where he discovered that the shipwrecked survivors from the French ships had come ashore to the south of the settlement.

Succeeding governors of the province maintained a peaceful coexistence with the local Native Americans, allowing the isolated outpost of St. Augustine some stability for a few years.

[34] In the second half of the 17th century, groups of Indians from the colony of Carolina conducted raids into Florida and killed the Franciscan priests who served at the Catholic missions.

The charter of 1663 for the new Province of Carolina, issued by King Charles II of England, was revised in 1665, claiming lands as far southward as 29 degrees north latitude, about 65 miles south of the existing settlement at St.

[35][36][37] The English buccaneer Robert Searle sacked St. Augustine in 1668, after capturing some Spanish supply vessels bound for the settlement and holding their crews at gun point while his men hid below decks.

[38] This raid and the establishment of the English settlement at Charles Town spurred the Spanish Crown to finally acknowledge the vulnerability of St. Augustine to foreign incursions and strengthen the city's defenses.

Fort St. Mark became a training and supply base, as well as a prisoner-of-war camp where three signers of the Declaration of Independence and South Carolina's lieutenant governor Christopher Gadsden were held.

[47] The 1783 Treaty of Paris, which recognized the independence of the Thirteen Colonies as the United States, ceded Florida back to Spain and returned the Bahamas to Britain.

Refugees from Dr. Andrew Turnbull's troubled colony in New Smyrna had fled to St. Augustine in 1777, made up the majority of the city's population during the period of British rule, and remained when the Spanish Crown took control again.

[48][49] During the Second Spanish period (1784–1821) of Florida, Spain was dealing with invasions of the Iberian peninsula by Napoleon's armies in the Peninsular War, and struggled to maintain a tenuous hold on its territories in the western hemisphere as revolution swept South America.

The United States, however, considered Florida vital to its political and military interests as it expanded its territory in North America, and maneuvered by sometimes clandestine means to acquire it.

[53] Once many Americans had begun to immigrate to the new territory, it became apparent that there would be continued skirmishes with local Creek and Miccosukee peoples and white settlers encroaching on their land.

In 1823, territorial governor William Duval and James Gadsden signed the Treaty of Moultrie Creek, forcing Seminoles onto a four million acre reservation in central Florida.

Gen. Robert E. Lee, who was commander of coastal defenses at the time, ordered that the fort's cannons be removed and sent to more strategic locations, such as Fernandina and the mouth of the St. Johns River.

In St. Augustine, the customhouse officer, Paul Arnau, organized the "Coastal Guard", a group who worked to disable the lighthouses along Florida's east coast.

[61][62] Henry Flagler, a co-founder with John D. Rockefeller of the Standard Oil Company, spent the winter of 1883 in St. Augustine and found the city charming, but considered its hotels and transportation systems inadequate.

[63] He had the idea to make St. Augustine a winter resort for wealthy Americans from the north, and to bring them south he bought several short line railroads and combined these in 1885 to form the Florida East Coast Railway.

[66] When Flagler's Florida East Coast Railroad was extended southward to Palm Beach and then Miami in the early 20th century, the wealthy stopped in St. Augustine en route to the southern resorts.

St. Augustine nevertheless still attracted tourists, and eventually became a destination for families traveling in automobiles as new highways were built and Americans took to the road for annual summer vacations.

[74] From May until July 1964, King and Hayling, along with Hosea Williams, C. T. Vivian, Dorothy Cotton, Andrew Young and others, organized marches, sit-ins, pray-ins, wade-ins and other forms of protest in St. Augustine.

[76] At the request of Hayling and King, civil rights supporters from elsewhere, including students, clergy, activists and well-known public figures, came to St. Augustine and were arrested together.

When the State of Florida abolished the Board in 1997, the City of St. Augustine assumed control of the reconstructed buildings, as well as other historic properties including the Government House.

The Bermuda High pumps in hot and unstable tropical air from the Bahamas and Gulf of Mexico, which help create the daily thundershowers that are typical in summer months.

Among its faculty members was Zora Neale Hurston; a historic marker was placed in 2003 at the house at 791 West King Street where she lived while teaching at Florida Memorial[120] (and where she completed her autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road.