More detail than you probably want or need

Saint Augustine, FL

Yesterday I awoke with more energy and it appeared the sun was going to cooperate so I took advantage of both and headed to Old Town to get some pictures.

I started the day at Castillo de San Marco, the fortification at St Augustine. Nine wooden forts built on this spot were destroyed in battle (including by Sir Francis Drake in 1586) before Spain finally gave orders for the fort to be built of stone starting in 1672.

The fort has the standard defence features, but probably the most unique feature of the fort is the building material itself, coquina, a local sedimentary shell-stone. It is very porous but after being quarried and left to dry it is very hard. It is left with little pockets of air throughout and these air pockets allow the stone to absorb cannon balls without hurting the integrity of the stone or wall. It took 23 years for the fort to be finished but once built it was pretty much impregnable. The story goes that when the British were bombarding the walls, after dark the soldiers from the fort went out and patched the walls, resurfacing the wall, and when day break came, there was no evidence of any bombardment which frustrated the British to no end.

Not only could the enemy not get the walls of the fort to crumble so it could be breeched, but the amount of cannon fire it could generate with it’s arsonal made it almost impossible to take. The Spanish soldiers spent hours doing cannon firing and musket drills and could load and fire quickly and precisely. Morale among the soldiers was maintained partly because they lived outside of the fort with their families and only served for a short amount of time in the fort rotating in on a regular basis.

The fort was also designed to withstand sieges. Two months of dry goods and live animals were always kept on hand in the fort, which was enough to hold them over until reinforcements and supplies could come from the Spanish settlement in Havana. The longest siege was in 1702 when fifteen hundred townspeople and soldiers were held under siege by the British for 50 days. The British gave up just as reinforcements and supplies were arriving.

In 1821 the fort was handed over by Spain to the United States and it was renamed Fort Marion in 1825. After that time, the fort was used as a prison, and here’s where the Seminole comes into the picture. The Seminole are Native Americans living primarily in Oklahoma, but with a minority in Florida as well. Historically, there were three major skirmishes with the Seminole peoples throughout history and after the Second Seminole War, the Seminole from Florida were expelled to Oklahoma. One of the leaders of the Florida Seminole was Osceola. He was captured in 1837, some say by being tricked into coming to St. Augustine under the guise of peace talks, and for a short time he was imprisoned in Fort Marion.

In 1861 when Florida succeeded from the Union, the Union officers from the fort were pulled north and the local militia were sympathetic to the Confederacy and took control of the fort. They left to fight in the Civil War, leaving only a caretaker couple in the fort. In 1862 the Union took the fort back with 500 troops simply by knocking on the door. The final and another peaceful transfer of the fort. Throughout it’s history, the fort never changed hands in battle. It was always through treaties of one kind or another kind of peaceful transfer.

The fort is smaller on the inside than it appears on the outside, but it is very well preserved and the static displays are well done, and being upgraded. The Park Rangers give talks a few times throughout the day just inside the gate and the ranger that did the one I joined was really interesting and helped to put things in perspective.

Parks employees and volunteers in period costumes also fire off cannons a few times throughout the day, which was really fun to watch. There is a board just inside the gate with a list of the times that happens, and it’s a good idea to head to the second level of the fort near the three functioning cannons to get a good spot to watch because there isn’t much room. There is an obvious white line on the deck that visitors must stand behind, so I just kind of hung out there as the time was getting close. As soon as the soldiers started their march upstairs for the demonstration, the place was instantly packed.

The U.S. National Park Service is celebrating it’s 100th anniversary this year (interestingly, Canada’s Parks Canada celebrated 100 years in 2011), and they made a point of asking for the public’s assistance in maintaining the historical assets that belong to the American people by obeying the park rules and not marring any of the surfaces. Unbelievably, just last week someone carved their initials into something in the fort.

After my tour of the fort it was time for lunch and I headed to one of the oldest restaurants in Old Town, Columbia. The garden courtyard at the entry is beautiful and the restaurant is made up of many small rooms, each appointed beautifully. It was a busy time so I opted to sit at the bar which I do frequently in nicer restaurants when I’m alone. I had a lovely, and huge salad called a “1905” which is one of their specialities and one of the best margarita’s I’ve had in a long time.

In the afternoon I headed for Constitution Square where I got some pics of the key elements there. Government House where the Spanish Governor read proclamations, and some of the monuments and plaques in the square.

Then I wandered over to hotel alley. As I mentioned in another of my posts, Henry Flagler really got the tourism trade going in St. Augustine when he started developing his hotels in the late 1800’s. First he built the Ponce de Leon. It was one of the first buildings with electricity and it’s own electric generating plant with 4000 electric lights, even in guest rooms that had to be changed out every 3 days or so. It’s architecture is beautiful, the detail work devine. Flagler had his buddy Louis Comfort Tiffiny do the windows in the dining room so you can imagine what they are worth. The only part of the interior I have seen is the lobby since it’s now a functioning college. The Guests needed to be invited to stay at the PDL hotel, and they could only come and stay for the whole season from Christmas to Easter. For that they had the honour of paying approx. $250,000 in today’s dollars.

Across the street Flagler built a second hotel, called the Alcazar which wasn’t quite as grand and didn’t require guests to stay for the whole season. But it included all sorts of fun things for the guests to do like a bowling alley, and a huge swimming pool. Guests from the Ponce de Leon were able to use the facilities as well.

Flagler’s friend, Franklin W. Smith, also wanted to get in on the hotel business and against the advice of his friend Flagler, he built the Casa Monica Hotel adjacent to the Alcazar. He over extended himself and when his furniture for the hotel got held up on the (Flagler owned) railway for 4 months and he was forced to use his own personal furniture to be able to book some guests into rooms. In the end, he had to sell the hotel, which Flagler kindly took off his hands for a “fair” price.