St. Augustine

Founded on 8 September 1565 by the Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, Florida’s first governor, and the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in what is now the contiguous United States. He named it San Agustín because his ships had first sighted Florida eleven days earlier, on the saint’s feast day. It was the capital of Spanish Florida for over two hundred years, became capital of British East Florida in 1763, and continued as capital through the second Spanish period after 1783.