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Early Human
Habitation
People first reached Florida at least 12,000 years ago. The
rich variety of environments in prehistoric Florida
supported a large number of plants and animals. The animal
population included most mammals that we know today. In
addition, many other large mammals that are now extinct
(such as the saber-tooth tiger, mastodon, giant armadillo,
and camel) roamed the land.
The Florida coastline along the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf
of Mexico was very different 12,000 years ago. The sea level
was much lower than it is today. As a result, the Florida
peninsula was more than twice as large as it is now. The
people who inhabited Florida at that time were hunters and
gatherers, who only rarely sought big game for food. Modern
researchers think that their diet consisted of small
animals, plants, nuts, and shellfish. These first Floridians
settled in areas where a steady water supply, good stone
resources for tool making, and firewood were available. Over
the centuries, these native people developed complex
cultures. During the period prior to contact with Europeans,
native societies of the peninsula developed cultivated
agriculture, traded with other groups in what is now the
southeastern United States, and increased their social
organization, reflected in large temple mounds and village
complexes.
European Exploration and Colonization
Written records about life in Florida began with the arrival
of the Spanish explorer and adventurer Juan Ponce de León in
1513. Sometime between April 2 and April 8, Ponce de León
waded ashore on the northeast coast of Florida, possibly
near present-day St. Augustine. He called the area la
Florida, in honor of Pascua florida ("feast of the
flowers"), Spain's Eastertime celebration. Other Europeans
may have reached Florida earlier, but no firm evidence of
such achievement has been found.
On another voyage in 1521, Ponce de León landed on the
southwestern coast of the peninsula, accompanied by
two-hundred people, fifty horses, and numerous beasts of
burden. His colonization attempt quickly failed because of
attacks by native people. However, Ponce de León's
activities served to identify Florida as a desirable place
for explorers, missionaries, and treasure seekers.
In 1539 Hernando de Soto began another expedition in search
of gold and silver, which took him on a long trek through
Florida and what is now the southeastern United States. For
four years, de Soto's expedition wandered, in hopes of
finding the fabled wealth of the Indian people. De Soto and
his soldiers camped for five months in the area now known as
Tallahassee. De Soto died near the Mississippi River in
1542. Survivors of his expedition eventually reached Mexico.
No great treasure troves awaited the Spanish conquistadores
who explored Florida. However, their stories helped inform
Europeans about Florida and its relationship to Cuba,
Mexico, and Central and South America, from which Spain
regularly shipped gold, silver, and other products. Groups
of heavily-laden Spanish vessels, called plate fleets,
usually sailed up the Gulf Stream through the straits that
parallel Florida's Keys. Aware of this route, pirates preyed
on the fleets. Hurricanes created additional hazards,
sometimes wrecking the ships on the reefs and shoals along
Florida's eastern coast.
In 1559 Tristán de Luna y Arellano led another attempt by
Europeans to colonize Florida. He established a settlement
at Pensacola Bay, but a series of misfortunes caused his
efforts to be abandoned after two years.
Spain was not the only European nation that found Florida
attractive. In 1562 the French protestant Jean Ribault
explored the area. Two years later, fellow Frenchman René
Goulaine de Laudonnière established Fort Caroline at the
mouth of the St. Johns River, near present-day Jacksonville.
First Spanish Period
These French adventurers prompted Spain to accelerate her
plans for colonization. Pedro Menéndez de Avilés hastened
across the Atlantic, his sights set on removing the French
and creating a Spanish settlement. Menéndez arrived in 1565
at a place he called San Augustín (St. Augustine) and
established the first permanent European settlement in what
is now the United States. He accomplished his goal of
expelling the French, attacking and killing all settlers
except for non-combatants and Frenchmen who professed belief
in the Roman Catholic faith. Menéndez captured Fort Caroline
and renamed it San Mateo.
French response came two years later, when Dominique de
Gourgues recaptured San Mateo and made the Spanish soldiers
stationed there pay with their lives. However, this incident
did not halt the Spanish advance. Their pattern of
constructing forts and Roman Catholic missions continued.
Spanish missions established among native people soon
extended across north Florida and as far north along the
Atlantic coast as the area that we now call South Carolina.
The English, also eager to exploit the wealth of the
Americas, increasingly came into conflict with Spain's
expanding empire. In 1586 the English captain Sir Francis
Drake looted and burned the tiny village of St. Augustine.
However, Spanish control of Florida was not diminished.
In fact, as late as 1600, Spain's power over what is now the
southeastern United States was unquestioned. When English
settlers came to America, they established their first
colonies well to the North—at Jamestown (in the present
state of Virginia) in 1607 and Plymouth (in the present
state of Massachusetts) in 1620. English colonists wanted to
take advantage of the continent's natural resources and
gradually pushed the borders of Spanish power southward into
present-day southern Georgia. At the same time, French
explorers were moving down the Mississippi River valley and
eastward along the Gulf Coast.
The English colonists in the Carolina colonies were
particularly hostile toward Spain. Led by Colonel James
Moore, the Carolinians and their Creek Indian allies
attacked Spanish Florida in 1702 and destroyed the town of
St. Augustine. However, they could not capture the fort,
named Castillo de San Marcos. Two years later, they
destroyed the Spanish missions between Tallahassee and St.
Augustine, killing many native people and enslaving many
others. The French continued to harass Spanish Florida's
western border and captured Pensacola in 1719, twenty-one
years after the town had been established.
Spain's adversaries moved even closer when England founded
Georgia in 1733, its southernmost continental colony.
Georgians attacked Florida in 1740, assaulting the Castillo
de San Marcos at St. Augustine for almost a month. While the
attack was not successful, it did point out the growing
weakness of Spanish Florida.
British Florida
Britain gained control of Florida in 1763 in exchange for
Havana, Cuba, which the British had captured from Spain
during the Seven Years' War (1756–63). Spain evacuated
Florida after the exchange, leaving the province virtually
empty. At that time, St. Augustine was still a garrison
community with fewer than five hundred houses, and Pensacola
also was a small military town.
The British had ambitious plans for Florida. First, it was
split into two parts: East Florida, with its capital at St.
Augustine; and West Florida, with its seat at Pensacola.
British surveyors mapped much of the landscape and coastline
and tried to develop relations with a group of Indian people
who were moving into the area from the North. The British
called these people of Creek Indian descent Seminolies, or
Seminoles,. Britain attempted to attract white settlers by
offering land on which to settle and help for those who
produced products for export. Given enough time, this plan
might have converted Florida into a flourishing colony, but
British rule lasted only twenty years.
The two Floridas remained loyal to Great Britain throughout
the War for American Independence (1776–83). However,
Spain—participating indirectly in the war as an ally of
France—captured Pensacola from the British in 1781. In 1784
it regained control of the rest of Florida as part of the
peace treaty that ended the American Revolution.
Second Spanish Period
When the British evacuated Florida, Spanish colonists as
well as settlers from the newly formed United States came
pouring in. Many of the new residents were lured by
favorable Spanish terms for acquiring property, called land
grants. Others who came were escaped slaves, trying to reach
a place where their U.S. masters had no authority and
effectively could not reach them. Instead of becoming more
Spanish, the two Floridas increasingly became more
"American." Finally, after several official and unofficial
U.S. military expeditions into the territory, Spain formally
ceded Florida to the United States in 1821, according to
terms of the Adams-Onís Treaty.
On one of those military operations, in 1818, General Andrew
Jackson made a foray into Florida. Jackson's battles with
Florida's Indian people later would be called the First
Seminole War.
Territorial Period
Andrew Jackson returned to Florida in 1821 to establish a
new territorial government on behalf of the United States.
What the U.S. inherited was a wilderness sparsely dotted
with settlements of native Indian people, African Americans,
and Spaniards.
As a territory of the United States, Florida was
particularly attractive to people from the older Southern
plantation areas of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia,
who arrived in considerable numbers. After territorial
status was granted, the two Floridas were merged into one
entity with a new capital city in Tallahassee. Established
in 1824, Tallahassee was chosen because it was halfway
between the existing governmental centers of St. Augustine
and Pensacola.
As Florida's population increased through immigration, so
did pressure on the federal government to remove the Indian
people from their lands. The Indian population was made up
of several groups—primarily, the Creek and the Miccosukee
people; and many African American refugees lived with the
Indians. Indian removal was popular with white settlers
because the native people occupied lands that white people
wanted and because their communities often provided a
sanctuary for runaway slaves from northern states.
Among Florida's native population, the name of Osceola has
remained familiar after more than a century and a half.
Osceola was a Seminole war leader who refused to leave his
homeland in Florida. Seminoles, already noted for their
fighting abilities, won the respect of U.S. soldiers for
their bravery, fortitude, and ability to adapt to changing
circumstances during the Second Seminole War (1835–42). This
war, the most significant of the three conflicts between
Indian people and U.S. troops in Florida, began over the
question of whether Seminoles should be moved westward
across the Mississippi River into what is now Oklahoma.
Under President Andrew Jackson, the U.S. government spent
$20 million and the lives of many U.S. soldiers, Indian
people, and U.S. citizens to force the removal of the
Seminoles. In the end, the outcome was not as the federal
government had planned. Some Indians migrated "voluntarily."
Some were captured and sent west under military guard; and
others escaped into the Everglades, where they made a life
for themselves away from contact with whites.
Today, reservations occupied by Florida's Indian people
exist at Immokalee, Hollywood, Brighton (near the city of
Okeechobee), and along the Big Cypress Swamp. In addition to
the Seminole people, Florida also has a separate Miccosukee
tribe.
By 1840 white Floridians were concentrating on developing
the territory and gaining statehood. The population had
reached 54,477 people, with African American slaves making
up almost one-half of the population. Steamboat navigation
was well established on the Apalachicola and St. Johns
Rivers, and railroads were planned.
Florida now was divided informally into three areas: East
Florida, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Suwannee River;
Middle Florida, between the Suwannee and the Apalachicola
Rivers; and West Florida, from the Apalachicola to the
Perdido River. The southern area of the territory (south of
present-day Gainesville) was sparsely settled by whites. The
territory's economy was based on agriculture. Plantations
were concentrated in Middle Florida, and their owners
established the political tone for all of Florida until
after the Civil War.
Statehood
Florida became the twenty-seventh state in the United States
on March 3, 1845. William D. Moseley was elected the new
state's first governor, and David Levy Yulee, one of
Florida's leading proponents for statehood, became a U.S.
Senator. By 1850 the population had grown to 87,445,
including about 39,000 African American slaves and 1,000
free blacks.
The slavery issue began to dominate the affairs of the new
state. Most Florida voters—who were white males, ages
twenty-one years or older—did not oppose slavery. However,
they were concerned about the growing feeling against it in
the North, and during the 1850s they viewed the new
anti-slavery Republican party with suspicion. In the 1860
presidential election, no Floridians voted for Abraham
Lincoln, although this Illinois Republican won at the
national level. Shortly after his election, a special
convention drew up an ordinance that allowed Florida to
secede from the Union on January 10, 1861. Within several
weeks, Florida joined other southern states to form the
Confederate States of America.
Civil War and Reconstruction
During the Civil War, Florida was not ravaged as several
other southern states were. Indeed, no decisive battles were
fought on Florida soil. While Union forces occupied many
coastal towns and forts, the interior of the state remained
in Confederate hands.
Florida provided an estimated 15,000 troops and significant
amounts of supplies— including salt, beef, pork, and
cotton—to the Confederacy, but more than 2,000 Floridians,
both African American and white, joined the Union army.
Confederate and foreign merchant ships slipped through the
Union navy blockade along the coast, bringing in needed
supplies from overseas ports. Tallahassee was the only
southern capital east of the Mississippi River to avoid
capture during the war, spared by southern victories at
Olustee (1864) and Natural Bridge (1865). Ultimately, the
South was defeated, and federal troops occupied Tallahassee
on May 10, 1865.
Before the Civil War, Florida had been well on its way to
becoming another of the southern cotton states. Afterward,
the lives of many residents changed. The ports of
Jacksonville and Pensacola again flourished due to the
demand for lumber and forest products to rebuild the
nation's cities. Those who had been slaves were declared
free. Plantation owners tried to regain prewar levels of
production by hiring former slaves to raise and pick cotton.
However, such programs did not work well, and much of the
land came under cultivation by tenant farmers and
sharecroppers, both African American and white.
Beginning in 1868, the federal government instituted a
congressional program of "reconstruction" in Florida and the
other southern states. During this period, Republican
officeholders tried to enact sweeping changes, many of which
were aimed at improving conditions for African Americans.
At the time of the 1876 presidential election, federal
troops still occupied Florida. The state's Republican
government and recently enfranchised African American voters
helped to put Rutherford B. Hayes in the White House.
However, Democrats gained control of enough state offices to
end the years of Republican rule and prompt the removal of
federal troops the following year. A series of political
battles in the state left African Americans with little
voice in their government.
Florida Development
During the final quarter of the nineteenth century,
large-scale commercial agriculture in Florida, especially
cattle-raising, grew in importance. Industries such as cigar
manufacturing took root in the immigrant communities of the
state.
Potential investors became interested in enterprises that
extracted resources from the water and land. These
extractive operations were as widely diverse as sponge
harvesting in Tarpon Springs and phosphate mining in the
southwestern part of the state. The Florida citrus industry
grew rapidly, despite occasional freezes and economic
setbacks. The development of industries throughout the state
prompted the construction of roads and railroads on a large
scale.
Beginning in the 1870s, residents from northern states
visited Florida as tourists to enjoy the state's natural
beauty and mild climate. Steamboat tours on Florida's
winding rivers were a popular attraction for these visitors.
The growth of Florida's transportation industry had its
origins in 1855, when the state legislature passed the
Internal Improvement Act. Like legislation passed by several
other states and the federal government, Florida's act
offered cheap or free public land to investors, particularly
those interested in transportation. The act, and other
legislation like it, had its greatest effect in the years
between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of World
War I. During this period, many railroads were constructed
throughout the state by companies owned by Henry Flagler and
Henry B. Plant, who also built lavish hotels near their
railroad lines. The Internal Improvement Act stimulated the
initial efforts to drain the southern portion of the state
in order to convert it to farmland.
These development projects had far-reaching effects on the
agricultural, manufacturing, and extractive industries of
late-nineteenth-century Florida. The citrus industry
especially benefitted, since it was now possible to pick
oranges in south Florida; put them on a train heading north;
and eat them in Baltimore, Philadelphia, or New York in less
than a week.
In 1898 national attention focused on Florida, as the
Spanish-American War began. The port city of Tampa served as
the primary staging area for U.S. troops bound for the war
in Cuba. Many Floridians supported the Cuban peoples' desire
to be free of Spanish colonial rule.
By the turn of the century, Florida's population and per
capita wealth were increasing rapidly; the potential of the
"Sunshine State" appeared endless. By the end of World War
I, land developers had descended on this virtual gold mine.
With more Americans owning automobiles, it became
commonplace to vacation in Florida. Many visitors stayed on,
and exotic projects sprang up in southern Florida. Some
people moved onto land made from drained swamps. Others
bought canal-crossed tracts through what had been dry land.
The real estate developments quickly attracted buyers, and
land in Florida was sold and resold. Profits and prices for
many developers reached inflated levels.
The Great Depression in Florida
Florida's economic bubble burst in 1926, when money and
credit ran out, and banks and investors abruptly stopped
trusting the "paper" millionaires. Severe hurricanes swept
through the state in the 1926 and 1928, further damaging
Florida's economy.
By the time the Great Depression began in the rest of the
nation in 1929, Floridians had already become accustomed to
economic hardship.
In 1929 the Mediterranean fruit fly invaded the state, and
the citrus industry suffered. A quarantine was established,
and troops set up roadblocks and checkpoints to search
vehicles for any contraband citrus fruit. Florida's citrus
production was cut by about sixty percent.
State government began to represent a larger proportion of
its citizens. Female citizens won the right to vote in 1920,
when the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
became law. In 1937, the requirement that voters pay a "poll
tax" was repealed, allowing poor African American and white
Floridians to have a greater voice in government. In 1944
the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed a system of all-white
primary elections that had limited the right of African
Americans to vote.
World War II and the Post-war "Boom"
World War II spurred economic development in Florida.
Because of its year-round mild climate, the state became a
major training center for soldiers, sailors, and aviators of
the United States and its allies. Highway and airport
construction accelerated so that, by war's end, Florida had
an up-to-date transportation network ready for use by
residents and the visitors who seemed to arrive in an
endless stream.
One of the most significant trends of the postwar era has
been steady population growth, resulting from large
migrations to the state from within the U.S. and from
countries throughout the western hemisphere, notably Cuba
and Haiti. Florida is now the fourth most populous state in
the nation.
The people who make up Florida's diverse population have
worked to make the Sunshine State a place where all citizens
have equal rights under the law. Since the 1950s, Florida's
public education system and public places have undergone
great changes. African American citizens, joined by Governor
LeRoy Collins and other white supporters, fought to end
racial discrimination in schools and other institutions.
Since World War II, Florida's economy also has become more
diverse. Tourism, cattle, citrus, and phosphate have been
joined by a host of new industries that have greatly
expanded the numbers of jobs available to residents.
Electronics, plastics, construction, real estate, and
international banking are among the state's more
recently-developed industries.
Several major U.S. corporations have moved their
headquarters to Florida. An interstate highway system exists
throughout the state, and Florida is home to major
international airports. The university and community college
system has expanded rapidly, and high-technology industries
have grown steadily. The U.S. space program—with its
historic launches from Cape Canaveral, lunar landings, and
the development of the space shuttle program—has brought
much media attention to the state. The citrus industry
continues to prosper, despite occasional winter freezes, and
tourism also remains important, bolstered by large capital
investments. Florida attractions, such as the large theme
parks in the Orlando area, bring millions of visitors to the
state from across the U.S. and around the world
Today, Floridians study their state's long history to learn
more about the lives of the men and women who shaped their
exciting past. By learning about our rich and varied
heritage, we can draw lessons to help create a better
Florida for all of its citizens.
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