On September 8, 1565, with much pomp and circumstance and 600 voyagers cheering, Menéndez set foot on the shores of Florida. King Philip II instructed Menéndez, Spain's most capable admiral, to remove the French menace to Spain's interests. As Don Pedro Menéndez de Avilés was assembling a fleet for an expedition to Florida, the French intrusion upon lands claimed by Spain was discovered. This settlement posed a threat to the Spanish fleets that sailed the Gulf Stream beside the east coast of Florida, carrying treasure from Central and South America to Spain. Johns River at what is today Jacksonville. In 1564 French Huguenots (Protestants) succeeded in establishing a fort and colony near the mouth of the St. In the following half century, the government of Spain launched no less than six expeditions attempting to settle Florida all failed. This newly claimed territory extended north and west to encompass most of the known lands of the North American continent that had not been claimed by the Spanish in New Spain (Mexico and the Southwest). Ponce de Leon claimed Florida for the Spanish Crown and named it Florida after the Easter season, known in Spanish as Pascua Florida. While on an exploratory trip in search of the fabled Bimini he sighted the eastern coast of Florida on Easter Sunday, which fell on March 27 that year. Historians credit Juan Ponce de Leon, the first governor of the Island of Puerto Rico, with the discovery of Florida in 1513. Augustine can boast that it contains the only urban nucleus in the United States whose street pattern and architectural ambiance reflect Spanish origins. Throughout the modern city and within its Historic Colonial District, there remain thirty-six buildings of colonial origin and another forty that are reconstructed models of colonial buildings. Augustine in the form of the town plan originally laid out by Governor Gonzalo Méndez de Canzo in the late sixteenth century and in the narrow streets and balconied houses that are identified with the architecture introduced by settlers from Spain. Vestiges of the First Spanish Colonial Period (1565 to 1764) remain today in St. Only the venerable Castillo de San Marcos, completed in the late seventeenth century, survived destruction of the city by invading British forces in 1702. The architectural legacy of the city's past is much younger, testimony to the impermanent quality of the earliest structures and to St.
Augustine this nation's first enduring settlement. Forty-two years before the English colonized Jamestown and fifty-five years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, the Spanish established at St. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied settlement of European and African-American origin in the United States.
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