Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, Florida

Pitt oil pencil and watercolor on CP watercolor sketchbook 5 in x 5 in

St. Augustine, Florida is oldest city in the United States. It is the longest continually inhabited European founded city in the United States. It’s a beautiful city with many buildings of Spanish Architecture and many attractions like the old town and the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, a fort which is considered the oldest fort made of stone in the United States. Yes, it’s a city with many “the oldest” and many “first”. British and Spanish so fought over it many times, but why? 

Here it’s a little bit of history, where a nature fact shapes the history of h the city. Ponce de León, an Spanish explorer observed for the first time the Gulf Stream in 1513. This warm current would help the ships return to Europe faster, weeks faster. Then Pedro Menéndez de Áviles founded St. Augustine in 1565. Turns out that St. Augustine was an strategic city because it was the last stop to catch the Gulf Stream towards Europe. 

Aha!

So many battles made the Spanish Queen authorized the construction of a fort made of stone to protect the city, the Castillo de San Marcos. The stone available was coquina, and here my writing becomes technical. Coquina is a rock naturally formed by limestone and fossilized shells. Coquina is very soft when first quarried, and so is left to dry for one to three years before use in building. Coquina was handy to build forts with because heavy cannon balls would sink into coquina instead of fracturing or breaking the structure. The fort/castle was never taken.

So I visited the fort, Castillo de San Marcos, which construction began in 1672 and was completed in 1695. I made a drawing of the fort, a view from the second floor or the roof really, that would significantly helped me remember such fascinating facts about this city. There are plenty of places to visit, magnificent buildings that came later and how clever and wealthy men wrote the history of this city, but one day visit can only that far.