USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -The territories that became part of the Spanish empire were called New Spain. At its height, New Spain included all of Mexico, Central America to the Isthmus of Panama, the lands that today are the southwestern United States and Florida, and much of the West Indies (islands in the Caribbean Sea).

Detailed explanation-2: -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 this nation’s first enduring settlement.

Detailed explanation-3: -The first Spanish missions were established in the 1680s near present-day San Angelo, El Paso and Presidio – areas that were closely tied to settlements in what is today New Mexico.

Detailed explanation-4: -Even before Jamestown or the Plymouth Colony, the oldest permanent European settlement in what is now the United States was founded in September 1565 by a Spanish soldier named Pedro Menéndez de Avilés in St. Augustine, Florida.