USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Near present-day St. Augustine, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León comes ashore on the Florida coast, and claims the territory for the Spanish crown. Native Americans inhabited the area that became known as Florida for thousands of years before any European contact.

Detailed explanation-2: -Spain’s effective claim to Florida began with Juan Ponce de León’s discovery and naming of the flowery peninsula in 1513. Ponce de León led the first European expedition to the Dry Tortugas, today commemorated at Fort Jefferson National Monument.

Detailed explanation-3: -Santa Fe, the first permanent European settlement in the Southwest, was established in 1610. Few Spaniards relocated to the southwest due to the distance from Mexico City and the dry and hostile environment.

Detailed explanation-4: -Much of its territory was gradually annexed by the United States in the West Florida Controversy. At its greatest extent, the colony included what are now the Florida Parishes of Louisiana, the southernmost parts of Mississippi and Alabama, as well as the Panhandle of Florida.

Detailed explanation-5: -Founded in 1565, St. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied settlement of European and African-American origin in the United States. Forty-two years before the English colonized Jamestown and fifty-five years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, the Spanish established at St.