America is marking its 250th anniversary this year, and Central Florida Public Media is bringing you weekly conversations from our community, exploring what that milestone means from a Central Florida perspective.
For centuries, people have come to Florida looking beyond the horizon. Indigenous people navigated its waterways. European explorers crossed oceans to reach its shores. Today astronauts launch from our Space Coast to destinations beyond Earth.
Florida's story of exploration goes back long before the United States existed, predating European arrival by thousands of years according to Ben Brotemarkle, Executive Director of the Florida Historical Society and host of their weekly show Florida Frontiers.
“People have been living here for 15,000 years, and those people came across the Bering Strait during the Ice Age we believe and made their way down into Florida,” he says.
At the time, the landscape was very different.
“Back then, Florida was three times wider than it is now, so a lot of these sites where people lived are now in the Gulf of Mexico,” he explains.
By the time Europeans arrived in the 1500s, Florida was already home to Indigenous people.
“There were literally dozens of different tribal groups, sophisticated tribal groups with complex cultures living here,” Brotemarkle says.
As examples, he points to the Apalachee in the Panhandle, the Calusa in southwest Florida, and the Tequesta in the Miami region.
Brotemarkle emphasizes that these communities established societies with their own systems of power, and they were not casual observers of European arrival. Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León arrived in 1513, giving Florida its name. Early attempts at permanent colonization were repeatedly challenged. In 1521, Ponce de León returned with settlers but was mortally wounded during an encounter with the Calusa. Later efforts also failed, including a 1559 Spanish expedition led by Don Tristán de Luna, whose settlement attempt in Pensacola Bay was devastated by a hurricane. French colonization efforts followed, and a group of settlers established Fort Caroline near what is Jacksonville today. However, the settlement was attacked and destroyed by Spanish forces who went on to establish St. Augustine in 1565, the first permanent European settlement in what is now the United States.
African presence in early Florida
Brotemarkle also highlights the role of people of African descent in Florida’s early history, saying they were among the first non-Indigenous people to set foot in Florida.
“Every one of those Spanish ships that came in the 1500s and 1600s had people of African descent on board,” he says.
He says under Spanish rule, slavery was not as rigidly race-based as it was under British systems later.
“They weren't all enslaved that came with the Spanish.” He says. “They were scouts and guides and translators and very valued crew members.”
Later, Fort Mose established in 1738 near St. Augustine, became the first legally sanctioned free Black settlement in what would become the U.S.
Brotemarkle also notes that Eatonville was established in 1887 as one of the first self-governing African American municipalities.
“People of African descent, like all of these other folks we've been talking about, from the Indigenous people and all the different Europeans, also came to Florida seeking a new life,” he says.
Brotemarkle says Florida’s history is not just one of people passing through.
“We've been talking about Florida as a catalyst for exploration,” he says. “People who came here exploring often found what they were looking for and established a permanent settlement here and permanent communities that many of which still exist today.”
From crossing continents to space exploration
Brotemarkle says Florida’s long history of exploration is ultimately tied to a shared human impulse to move into the unknown. He sees similarities between early migration into Florida, European voyages, and modern space exploration launched from the Space Coast.
“Imagine the spirit that that must take to get on a boat and then travel across the ocean not even knowing what you were going to hit. The first explorations into space had that same kind of faith in exploration because the computers on those first Apollo missions weren't as complicated as what's in your cell phone,” he explains.
Brotemarkle adds that every important manned mission into space has been launched from Cape Canaveral.
“I think that it's just human nature to explore and to discover and go as far as you can and all of these people had different motivations for that, but I think it's almost like a primal thing for all human beings,” he says.
