St Augustine is the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the United States — founded in 1565, fifty-five years before the Mayflower, forty-two years before Jamestown. It wears this distinction well and with some commercial enthusiasm, but the core of the old city, behind the seawall and the fortress, has a texture and scale that genuinely does not resemble anything else in Florida. The Spanish colonial street plan, the coquina stone buildings, and the narrow lanes south of the plaza are the real thing, not a reconstruction.
St Augustine was a destination. We had ridden 2,750 miles from San Diego and were just so excited to see it. Every St Augustine sign we passed was a photo opportunity. We road into the old city, across the bridge of lions and on to the lighthouse – always eastward until we could go no further; until there was only sand bars, no road and the certainty that it really was the Atlantic out there. We stayed at a Best Western in town and enjoyed a champagne evening.
A Little Background
The Timucua people had inhabited the area for thousands of years before Spanish explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilés established a settlement here in September 1565, naming it for the feast day of Saint Augustine on which he had first sighted the coast. The settlement survived attacks from Francis Drake (1586), repeated British incursions from Carolina, and two British occupations (1763–1783) before becoming part of the United States when Spain ceded Florida in 1821.
The city’s current character was substantially shaped by Henry Flagler, the Standard Oil co-founder who arrived in the 1880s and built two enormous Gilded Age resort hotels — the Ponce de León and the Alcazar — along with the Flagler Memorial Presbyterian Church, all in a Spanish Renaissance Revival style that he invented for the occasion. The Ponce de León is now Flagler College; the Alcazar is now the Lightner Museum. The Flagler-era buildings and the genuine Spanish colonial district exist side by side, which produces an unusual layering of history.
What to See and Do
The Castillo de San Marcos on the bay front is a seventeenth-century Spanish colonial fortress — the oldest masonry fort in the continental United States, built from 1672 onwards of coquina, a local shell-stone that absorbs cannon fire rather than shattering. The National Park Service operates it as a national monument; the interior is open for self-guided exploration, including the gun deck, the towers, and the original dungeons. Adult approximately US$15; free for National Park pass holders.
The Colonial Quarter on St George Street is a living history museum occupying several buildings in the old town — blacksmithing, musket demonstrations, a working crossbow range, period-costumed interpreters. More convincing than most such operations. Adult approximately US$14.
The Flagler College building (the former Ponce de León Hotel) offers guided tours of the interior — the Tiffany stained-glass windows in the dining hall, the hand-painted murals, and the Rotunda are extraordinary examples of Gilded Age excess. Tours run daily from the college admissions office; approximately US$14.
The Lightner Museum in the former Alcazar Hotel displays the Victorian and Gilded Age collections of Chicago newspaper publisher Otto Lightner — cut glass, mechanical musical instruments, antique furniture, natural history curiosities. The former casino swimming pool now houses an antique mall. Adult entry approximately US$15.
St Augustine Beach, on Anastasia Island across the Bridge of Lions, is 8 kilometres of Atlantic beach — wide, uncrowded by Florida standards, and backed by Anastasia State Park, which has 6.5 kilometres of undeveloped beach with campsites behind it. Anastasia State Park admission approximately US$8 per vehicle.
Walking the old city — the area south of the plaza between the bay and St George Street — is the essential activity. The Oldest Wooden Schoolhouse, the Cathedral Basilica of St Augustine (the oldest Catholic parish in the US, though the current building dates from 1797), and the lanes between them. The plaza itself was laid out according to Spanish colonial town-planning law and has been a public space continuously since the 1570s.
Getting There
St Augustine is on I-95 and US-1, 100 kilometres south of Jacksonville, which has the nearest major airport (Jacksonville International, JAX). Driving from Jacksonville takes under an hour; from Orlando, approximately two hours. Amtrak does not serve St Augustine.
Cost and Hours
St Augustine is a popular tourist destination and prices reflect it during peak season (winter and spring). Mid-range hotels in the old town run US$150–250 per night. The Castillo is the one essential paid site; most of the old city is free to walk and explore. Allow two days; one full day is sufficient if time is short.