It’s the oldest city in the United States. If counting by European years, anyway.
When a place is as storied as St. Augustine is sometimes legend winds up trumping reality. STA is more seedy, way more cheesy and much less glamorous than whatever it is you’re imagining. It’s full of tourist traps, pseudo landmark locations and less than optimally maintained vestiges of bygone days. Its locals are poor and the short-term visitors are more Bourbon Street than Roman ruins in their treatment of the place. And yet.
A place of contradictions, St.Augustine holds centuries-old treasures, boasts a war-filled history and oozes a controversial charm that is hard to place and impossible to resist. Its history is not a pleasant one, but it’s sure hard to imagine that today standing under manicured palms in the carefully curated Old Town.
Situated on the Atlantic coast in the varied environs that are Florida, STA was settled by Spaniards in 1565. Even though we now know that much of the Americas were already inhabited by native peoples when Europeans ‘discovered’ and claimed the territories for their own, St. Augustine will forever be seen as the first real American city.
It’s also the site of the mythical Fountain of Youth, railroad baron Henry Flagler’s first resort concept hotels, the country’s oldest masonry fort, the Castillo de San Marcos and dozens of churches, homes and hotels boasting breathtaking Spanish design details and swashbuckling historical tales for the ages.
While many of these delights have retained their historical features, like Flagler College, the Memorial Presbyterian Church and Fort Matanzas, just as many attractions are recreations or hollow versions of their former selves. I suppose this is typical to many long-standing historical relics.
Prague, for example, boasts many ‘historical’ properties where only the shells are authentic, having been gutted over the centuries. Maybe it’s something about Florida that worsens the effect of this common phenomenon. Prague still feels storied, ancient, meaningful, serious – even though it’s surely one of the best pretending historical sites I’ve ever seen. Not far under the surface Prague is a tourist trap of epic proportions. But it’s still Prague.
St. Augustine feels every bit the hollow self that it now is. I had to search for the meaty underside of the town – the truth of it. Catering to visitors who prefer the Disney pirate story to the conquistador reality, the truth of a place like St. Augustine is one of colonial and native bloodshed, territory battles, slavery, theft and reparation, robber barons and money.
Even now one only has to walk a couple of blocks away from the tourist-focused downtown to witness the extreme economic and racial segregation that still exists in the place.
I learned that Martin Luther King, Jr. had led marches on the Old Slave Market to help pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Archaeological evidence proves Native tribes had lived in the territory for more than 1,000 years before the Spanish, becoming extinct before 1800. Henry Flagler’s resort dream took over the town only to then abandon it when Palm Beach County took off years later.
Much like modern plantation fantasy culture, these real stories aren’t as fun and attractive as a fountain promising immortality or a white-washed ‘old town’ fantasy. Who would visit if they called it Slave Market Square?
As sobering as St. Augustine’s history is, it is the history of this country and ironically, that’s completely in line with the myth we’ve assigned to it: America’s first. With the actual terror of domination we take the philosophical good of Democracy. With the bad of exclusion we take the good of evolution. If you look deeply, St. Augustine is a remnant of all of these things: the best and worst of the United States – our most horrific truths and our most beautiful possibilities.
Maybe that’s what’s behind its enduring attraction, whether we know it or not.
Sources: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/st-augustine-florida; https://www.visitstaugustine.com/history/matanzas/timucua-florida.php; https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attractions-g34599-Activities-c47-St_Augustine_Florida.html; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Augustine,_Florida