Ponce de León Lands in Florida: Spain Claims New World

Juan Ponce de Leon made landfall near present-day St. Augustine on April 2, 1513, naming the land "La Florida" because he arrived during Pascua Florida, the Spanish Feast of Flowers celebrated at Easter. The expedition was the first documented European contact with the North American mainland, and the name Ponce de Leon chose for the territory has endured for over five centuries. The legend that he was searching for a Fountain of Youth was likely invented decades later by rival Spanish chroniclers trying to make him look foolish. Ponce de Leon was no wide-eyed adventurer. He had sailed on Columbus's second voyage in 1493, conquered and governed Puerto Rico, and amassed considerable wealth from gold mining and slave labor. His Florida expedition was a business venture authorized by a royal contract that granted him the right to discover, settle, and govern "the island of Bimini" and any other lands he found. The Spanish crown expected a return on its investment in the form of gold, converts, and territorial claims. The landing party encountered a coastline that was anything but empty. The Timucua and other indigenous peoples had inhabited Florida for thousands of years, building complex societies with extensive trade networks. Ponce de Leon's second expedition to Florida in 1521, an attempt to establish a permanent colony near Charlotte Harbor, met fierce Calusa resistance. Warriors attacked the landing party with arrows, and Ponce de Leon was struck in the thigh. He retreated to Cuba, where the wound became infected and killed him. Spain's subsequent colonization of Florida produced the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the United States when Pedro Menendez de Aviles founded St. Augustine in 1565. Florida remained a Spanish possession for most of the next 300 years, briefly passing to Britain from 1763 to 1783 before reverting to Spain. The United States acquired it through the Adams-Onis Treaty in 1819. Ponce de Leon's landing initiated three centuries of European competition for control of southeastern North America.