Aerial view of the Fountain of Youth Park (campsite) and The Nombre de Dios site (fort site).

In September of 1565 Pedro Menendez de Aviles of Spain established the first successful European colony in the United States at St. Augustine. For more than sixty years archaeologists and historians have been searching for the site of that first settlement, but have been hampered by the major changes in St. Augustine's landscape that four centuries of continuous human occupation and development have wrought. In 1987 and 1993, however, new historical evidence uncovered by Dr. Eugene Lyon, combined with modern archaeological survey, remote sensing and computer analysis techniques made it possible for us to identify two of the original sites of Pedro Menendez' 1565-1566 establishments. These are on the grounds respectively of what are today the Nombre de Dios Mission-La Leche Shrine and the Fountain of Youth Park.

The French Fort Carolyn (1564-1565) Destroyed by Menendez in 1565.

Menendez arrived in Florida in 1565 with more than 800 people (including 26 women), and they hastily built a settlement at or near the village of the Timucuan Indian chief, Seloy. Menendez's soldiers fortified Chief Seloy's council house, which was located "very near the water's edge," by digging a trench around it, and throwing up a breastwork of earth and faggots (fascines) inside. The munitions were stored inside the council house, and this served as the first fort in the first permanent European colony in North America. What little we know about Timucuan council houses suggests that they were probably (although not necessarily) circular or oval and very large, capable of holding several hundred people.

Excavating at the Fountain of Youth site.

The Indians of Seloy tired of the Spaniards quickly, and they attacked and partially burned the fort on April 19, 1566, and the Spaniards decided to relocate their fort and settlement across the Matanzas Bay to Anastasia Island, putting the inlet's waters between them and the Indian town. Before they left, however, they established a blockhouse or lookout "at" Seloy, where several Spanish soldiers were stationed until after 1572.

They results of survey and excavation projects at the Fountain of Youth Park site (8-SJ-31) in 1976, 1985, 1987, 1991, 1994 and 2000 provide irrefutable evidence of Menendez-era Spanish occupation: a Spanish barrel well, rectangular stains from house footings put together with nails, such early Spanish artifacts as early style olive jar, Columbia Plain majolica and chevron beads; several sixteenth century uniform buttons and a large number of lead musket balls and shot. Included among the finds was an intact ebony wood figa, a clenched-fist amulet with Islamic origins, used widely in Spain to protect children from the evil eye. This may indicate the presence of a very small child in the Menendez camp. (This and other artifacts from the site can be seen here soon).

Click image for larger view!

The excavation at Nombre de Dios, showing locations of major archaeological features.

The remains of the Spanish settlement at the Fountain of Youth Park are concentrated in a low-lying area of about 55 meters (N-S) by 70 plus meters (E-W). To the east is the Bay of St. Augustine, and there is evidence of Timucua Indian occupation to the north, south and west of the Spanish remains. We suspect that this area may have been the only available open space in Seloy's town when the Spaniards arrived. There appears also to have been some sort of post or earth wall division between the Spanish settlement and the Indian occupation areas.

We did not, however, find unequivocal evidence for an Indian council house fortified in a European manner, which is what we might expect at the Seloy-Menendez fort. But a section of a sixteenth century moat or defensive ditch was discovered about 100 meters south the Fountain of Youth Park site at the site of the Mission of Nombre de Dios, during test excavations in 1987. The ditch ran westward away from the waterline in a straight line for 30 meters, where it abruptly ended at what seems to be a wooden wall. The wall was perpendicular to the moat, and extended both north and south of the western end of the ditch.

Click image for larger view!

Conjectural locations of the Menendez fort and campsite in relation to the present landscape. (This map is based on available archaeological evidence and the assumption that the fort was an equilateral triangle, measuring about 125-150 ft per side.)

To the south of the ditch-moat, we found a pit-type lime-burning kiln, and the support posts for a large, square structure, possibly a watchtower. Artifacts from the Nombre de Dios site included glass beads, Spanish and Indian pottery, iron spikes and musket balls.

The site at Nombre de Dios is probably either the original Seloy fort (although we so far have no evidence for a Native America council house) or remnants of the blockhouse established in 1566 by Menendez near or at Seloy, when the Spaniards abandoned their first settlement site in Seloy's village.

As with so many archaeological projects, the ongoing excavations at both Nombre de Dios and the Fountain of Youth Park have raised as many new questions as they have answered. There is little doubt, however, that these sites are the earliest Spanish settlements in Florida, and still hold many more clues to this seminal chapter in American history.

Funding for these projects has been provided by the Bureau of Historic Preservation, Florida Department of State (assisted by the Historic Preservation Advisory council), the National Geographic Society, the Fountain of Youth Park, Inc., the University of Florida; St. Augustine Foundation Inc., the Institute for Early Contact Period Studies at the University of Florida; the Historic St. Augustine Research Institute; the Catholic Diocese of St. Augustine and John Fraser and family.

For more detailed information about the archaeological search for Menendez, click here.