FLORIDA

POPULATION: 19,900,000 (2015); 2,300,000 (20%) born outside the United States (4th highest percentage in USA)

CAPITAL: Tallahassee (182,000, 2012)

NAME: State of Florida

ADMISSION DAY: March 3, 1845 (27^th state of U.S.A.)

STATE NICKNAME: The Sunshine State

PRINCIPAL CITIES (2014): Jacksonville (823,000); Miami (420,000); Tampa (359,000); Gainesville city (128,500)

ETHNIC GROUPS: 4,180,000 (2012) Hispanics and Latinos (4,370,000), which include 1,100,000 Cubans (more than 100,000 of whom arrived on Florida shores as refugees in 1980), 550,000 Puerto Ricans, and 450,00 Mexicans; black population: 3,135,000 (2012, 4th highest in USA); Asians: 494,000 (8th highest in USA); native Americans: 95,000.
LANGUAGES: English (official), 76%; Spanish 17%; Creole, 1.5%; French, 1.0%;

RELIGIONS: Protestant, 54%; Roman Catholic, 26%; Jewish, 4%; Mormon, 1%;

LIFE EXPECTANCY (2012): 79.7

LITERACY (2012): 99.8%.

MONEY: USA dollar

ECONOMY: tourism

GEOGRAPHY: low-lying peninsula bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, the Strait of Florida, and the Gulf of México

HISTORY:

13,000 BCE – 1512 C.E. Inhabited by hunter-gatherer peoples at first, then, mainly, by Timucua, Calusa, Apalachee, and Tocobago peoples, and last by Seminoles in later centuries up to the present.

2,000 BCE Timucua people arrive from northern South America via the Caribbean island chain.

1513 Juan Ponce de León, Spanish explorer and conquistador landed on Easter Sunday, April 2-4 (la Pascua Florida); he landed at St. Augustine, but he made no permanent settlement.

1526 The Spanish explorer Vázquez de Ayllón tries but fails to establish a Spanish foothold in Florida.

1527 The Spanish explorers and conquistadors Pánfilo de Narváez and his second-in-command, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, fail disastrously to establish a Spanish colony in Florida.

For Cabeza de Vaca's narration of the Spanish conquistadors' arrival in La Florida, see: => Cabeza de Vaca. Pánfilo de Narváez and all but four men (among these Cabeza de Vaca and the Moorish slave, Estevanico) died by 1528.

1539-1542 Hernando de Soto, with 700 men, 9 ships, 220 horses, priests, and tons of equipment for colonization and conquest, undertook a disastrous exploration of Florida (especially the Bradenton and Tampa areas). He died on the Mississippi River after wandering through much of the American Southeast. For a map of de Soto's failed odyssey see: => De Soto map. In 2012, archeologists discovered that de Soto and his massive party went through Ocala, Micanopy, and Gainesville on their way through Florida.

1559-1561 Tristán de Luna y Arrellano, Spanish conquistador, briefly settled Peñascola (Pensacola)

1562-1565 French Huguenot explorers and settlers (Jean Ribaut, René Gaumont de Laudonnière, et al) explore and settle Charlesfort at Parris Island and Fort La Caroline in Jacksonville

1565 Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, Spanish conquistador and settler, founds San Agustín on the lands of Chief Seloy’s village among the Timucua nation.

Menéndez de Avilés massacres the French colonists at La Caroline and the survivors of Fort Caroline at Matanzas Bay.

1566-1587 The Spanish empire, under the leadership of Menéndez de Avilés, establishes the first capital of La Florida at Santa Elena on what is Parris Island in the U.S.A. state of South Carolina. This substantial settlement and capital, north of San Agustín, served the purpose of protecting the Spanish treasure fleets. From Santa Elena, Spanish Jesuits and soldier-explorers founded other bases well into the Appalachian Mountains. Due to attacks by English and French corsairs, the Spanish crowd ordered the settlement destroyed in order to pull back to St. Augustine. (The first English settlement in South Carolina was founded in 1670.)

1566 Site of Miami and surrounding area claimed by Menéndez de Avilés as a possession of Spain.

1567 The first settlers of St. Augustine performed the first stage production, or masque, in North America.

1572 St. Augustine is reestablished on its current site.

1587 The Franciscan mission of Nombre de Dios is established in St. Augustine near the so-called Fountain of Youth on a site occupied since about 2000 BCE.

1606 La Misión San Francisco de Potano is founded by Franciscan missionaries, sent from the Misión Nombre de Dios in St. Augustine; the mission is located 8 miles NW of Gainesville, Florida. (For more details, see: => St. Augustine #14b. In northern and western Florida alone the Spanish government and church established some 50 missions.

1610-1612 The Franciscan mission of Santa Fe de Toloca was established north of Gainesville, Florida, on or near the Santa Fe river. This mission connected the camino real (royal highway) between St. Augustine and the San Luis de Apalachee mission in present-day Tallahassee (the Apalachee province of New Spain in the first Spanish period). (Santa Fe College was named for the river, but the mission had the same name.)

1672-1695 The Castillo de San Marcos (Fort Marion under the English and Americans) was built in its current form.

1693 Spain declares by official royal edict that all African slaves who escape from the English colonies would become free upon arriving in Spanish Florida, converting to Roman Catholicism, and, for men, serving in the militia.

1727 For a view of Florida’s place in geographical relationship to the English view of the “West Indies” in the context of early 18^th century colonial Latin America, see the following map:

1729 The last recorded living Timucuan native person dies.

1738 The Spanish town and fort of Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose (Fort Mose), first completely free black settlement in what would become USA territory, built two miles north of the Castillo in St. Augustine.

1740 Fort Mose destroyed by English slave owners and their Indian allies in an invasion from the Carolinas.

1763-1783 Florida was ceded to England from Spain by the Treaty of Paris; Fort Mose reconstructed and resettled, 1763.

1777 English settles people from Minorca and other Mediterranean places in Florida.

1783 Florida ceded back to Spain by the Treaty of Versailles

1783-1821 Second Spanish period

1790 Don Vicente Manuel de Zéspedes y Velasco, Spanish Brigadier General and former governor of La Florida, sent a lengthy report to the king of Spain about Spain’s precarious colonial situation in La Florida; in the report he described the main problem facing Spanish control of the region: “those who dwell in the interior of the southern states and who are called Crackers, a species of white renegade” (The Florida Historical Quarterly, October, 1984, p. 190).

1819 Florida was ceded to the USA by the Adams-Onís Treaty. The Treaty was proclaimed in 1821. (See note #1 below.)

1816-1845 Three Seminole Wars in which the United States Army fought against and more or less defeats the semi-native Seminole tribe of Florida: (1) 1816-1818, with Gen. Andrew Jackson and Gen. E. P. Gaines; (2) 1835-1842 with Osceola and Billy Bowlegs; (3) 1855-1856 with 100 Seminoles alive and hiding in the southern Florida wetlands.

1821 Spain sells East and West Florida to the United States of America. All Spanish citizens either leave Florida for Cuba or become American subjects and citizens; most blacks remaining in Florida revert to slave status again.

1845 Florida becomes the 27^th state of the USA as a “slave state.”

1860 Census in St. Augustine: 1,938 slaves; 1,217 “white” residents; 90 free blacks.

1861 Florida secedes from the USA and joins the Confederate States of America.

1861-1865 American Civil War

1865 The Lincolnville neighborhood in St. Augustine becomes a segregated Afro-American neighborhood.

1868 Florida readmitted to the USA

1896 Miami became an incorporated city. The pre-Spanish native inhabitants were the Tequestas or the Mayami.. Miami was claimed for the king of Spain by Pedro Menéndez in 1566.

1920 – 1929 Florida land boom; internal American immigration from northern states.

1926 SW Eighth Street, the core of a new shopping area west of downtown Miami, saw the construction of the iconic Tower Theater. In 1931, the architect Robert Law Reed remodeled into its current art deco style. Starting especially in the 1960s, after the Cuban Revolution began in 1959, SW Eight Street, with the arrival of thousands of Cuban refugees, become the center of Little Havana, and it became known as Calle Ocho. In March every year more than a million people visit the Calle Ocho Open House fiesta. For Calle Ocho, see: =>

1950-1960 Immigration of Haitian professionals to Florida. For example, 261 of 264 graduates of Haitian medical schools left Haiti from 1957-1963.) Chart of Haitian migration:

1959 (Jan 1) Victory by Fidel Castro in Cuba

1959-1962 1,000,000 Cubans immigrate to USA, principally Florida (others come later); 1980: 100,000 more Cubans arrived from Cuba

1972-1990 80,000 middle class and lower class Haitians arrived in Florida: the so-called Boatpeople.

1979-1987 Robert Graham, governor (Dem.).

1992 Hurricane Andrew devastated southern Florida around the Miami area.

1991-1994 37,000 more Haitians fled to Florida.

1999-2007 John Ellis "Jeb" Bush (GOP) served as governor.

2006 Charles Joseph Crist, Jr. (GOP) elected governor

2007-2008 SFCC begins offering HUM 2461, Humanities of Latin America.

50% of all Cubans living in the United States live in Miami. Other Cuban population centers in Florida are: Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville.

Florida's Hispanic population: 3,000,000.

2009 Major art exhibition (glass and multi-media) by Therman Statom at the Orlando Museum of Art (OMA) on Ponce de León and “Stories of the New World.”

2011 – 2014 Rick Scott (Republican) was elected the 45^th governor of the state of Florida.

2015 – 2019 Rick Scott (Republican) re-elected as governor.

GOVERNMENT: Representative democracy

MILITARY: State patrol, local police, National Guard

CHIEF EXECUTIVE: Governor Rick Scott (GOP)

MAJOR POLITICAL PARTIES: Democratic Party, Republican Party

1. The Adams-Onís Treaty (1819) solved border disputes between the United States and Spain in these areas: (a) East and West Florida were ceded to the United States (West Florida then went all the way to the Mississippi River); (b) the Sabine River in Texas; (c) firm boundary agreements between the USA and Spain from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean; (d) indemnification of $5,000,000.00 by the USA for claims against the Spanish government; and (e) reaffirmation of terms of the Louisiana Purchase.