A Day Ashore Way in the Past

We decided to rent a car and do some sightseeing yesterday.  The destination was St. Augustine, the oldest town in America.  Having wheels is a real treat and besides that, it was good for Bear to sit in what we now call a real seat.  The distance to the past was only fifty or so miles.  The old part of St. Augustine is a bucket list item.  What a wonderful place.  Bear and I signed up for a trolley tour and in the heat it was the right thing to do.  Not wanting to temp the back thing, Bear stayed on the trolley while I toured the old fort guarding Matanzas inlet from the Atlantic.  It was state of the art during the era and was never captured even though it was more or less under siege up to the Civil War.  Of that time, the Confederacy merely asked for the keys and were give them by the caretaker.  Then the Union asked for the keys and the Confederates handed them over, thus it was not damaged in that war. 

The area was first visited by Don Juan Ponce de Leon on Easter Sunday 1513.  The Spanish Admiral, Menendez actually established the settlement in August 1565, Feast Day of St. Augustine and named it after him.  There were some unruly French that established a fort on the St. Johns River to the north of St. Augustine and old Menendez decided to do them in so that there was clean claim to the area.  He was successful thanks in part to the assistance of a hurricane.  To calibrate one, St. Augustine was in place forty two years before Jamestown and fifty five years before the Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock. 

Flagler College once the Ponce de Leon Hotel

I mentioned that Florida seems to worship a fellow named Flagler.  It is even more so in St. Augustine, his favorite place.  Turns out that not only did he run a railroad the length of Florida but he was also the co-founder of Standard Oil. That explains much.  Anyway, he built churches, at least three grand hotels and many other buildings of the most grand type in town.  One such grand hotel, the Ponce de Leon, is not Flagler College, a liberal arts institution of only two thousand students.  What a grand place it is.  In essence, Flagler finished what the Spanish monarchy envisioned over five hundred years before, except of course without electricity. 

Another Flagler Hotel

If there is any such thing as a pretty cannon, this is it.

The fort guarding the Matanzas Inlet has seen some happenings.  Soon it will see the arrival of the sailing vessel Why Knot.  Scratch that on some monument in town.  Actually, we plan to stop there this week.