St. Augustine, Florida

We spent the last two days in St. Augustine, Florida. We were based at the home of my nephew and his family in Daltona, Florida. Our original plan was to spend one day, but it simply was not enough.

St. Augustine is the oldest city in the United States. That distinction than also leads to many of the other "oldest" designations including landing, school, house, and oak tree.

The two most significant citizens were Ponce de Leon, and Henry Flagler. Ponce de Leon discovered the fountain of youth, or at least a spring that was later believed to be the fountain of youth in St. Augustine. While it's true significance may be disputed, the fact that de Leon lived to be in his sixtys when the average age for a contemporary was less than 40 lent some credibility to the story. He died of an infection from an cut, not of old age. Steve tried some with mixed results.
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Mr. Flagler was born the son of a poor minister. He made a good decision and joined a gentleman in named Rockerfeller in a business called Standard Oil. Needless to say, he made a lot of money. He built a number of buildings in St. Augustine in the early 1900, including two hotels. Flager didn't spare any cost in the construction of these buildings and they remain as show cases of some of the greatest architecture. Flager also love Key west and with his own money built a railroad from St. Augustine to Key West.

One of the hotels in town was eventually sold to a college (Flagler) and now serves as a small liberal arts college with
a student enrollment of only 2500. The college has 16 other buildings in town. Only 20 percent of those who apply are able to get into the college. The college has one of the largest collections of Tiffany stain glass windows.

The has a large fort which fended off the british attack. The construction of the fort was a combination of sand, sea shells, and water that eventually ended up as a substance called coquina. The walls were between 12 and 19 feet thick. Allow this substance had never been used to built a fortress before, it proved very successful and the fort was never breached.

We have now began our journey northward, planning on being in Charleston on Saturday. We await our next adventure.