(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Photo Diary: Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park, St Augustine FL [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-23 According to legend, the Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon went to Florida in search of the fabled Fountain of Youth, which gave immortality to anyone who drank from its waters. In reality, though, de Leon was just looking for gold and glory. For those who don't know, I live in a converted campervan and travel around the country, posting photo diaries of places that I visit. I am currently wintering in Florida. Juan Ponce de Leon was born in Spain sometime around the year 1460 (there are no specific records of his birth). Not much is known of his early life: he was the son of a minor nobleman and served for a time as a page in the King of Aragon's court before doing a stint as an army officer. De Leon enters history in 1493, when he became a member of Christopher Columbus' second expedition to the New World. By 1502 de Leon was serving under the Spanish Governor of Hispaniola, Nicolas de Ovando, where he served loyally and was granted the governorship of a province on the eastern side of the island. In 1508, de Leon had sufficient money and men to strike out on his own, and he led an expedition to the island of Puerto Rico, where he suppressed the local Natives, founded a settlement near what is now San Juan, and claimed the island. He was officially named Governor in 1509. His term did not last long, however. Within two years he had become embroiled in a political dispute with Diego Columbus, the son of Christopher, and was forced from office. But de Leon still had enough political connections to gain an appointment as Governor of Bimini. The problem was that no Spaniards had yet actually been to Bimini, and in fact nobody was even sure where it was. They had only heard about it through stories told by local Natives. Nevertheless, de Leon set out from Puerto Rico in March 1513 with a small fleet and some men, which he was paying for out of his own pocket, and headed north. A month later, he sighted land. Modern historians generally agree that the spot he had reached was somewhere between St Augustine and Melbourne. Since it was the time of the Spanish Easter Festival of Flowers, de Leon named his new land “La Florida”, and he assumed that it was an island that formed part of Bimini. He did not know he had found an entire new continent. Turning south, de Soto followed the coastline until he realized that this was no island. Over the next several months he sailed down Florida's Atlantic Coast, through the Keys, and up the Gulf Coast to somewhere around modern Punta Gorda. At that point, he sailed back to Puerto Rico to report his discovery, and then traveled to Spain to meet with the King and receive the title of Governor of Bimini and Florida. He was granted a Royal Charter to form a Spanish colony there. It took until 1521 for de Leon to organize another expedition from Havana to Florida, consisting of two ships and 200 men. It proved to be fatal for him. Once again reaching the area around Punta Gorda, de Leon and his men were attacked by a band from the powerful Calusa Native American Nation which lived in that area, and during the fighting he was struck in the leg by a barbed bone-tipped arrow. The wound became infected and festered, and de Leon died shortly after returning to Cuba. None of the contemporary Spanish records of the time mention anything about a “fountain of youth”, or give any indication that de Leon, or any other Spaniard, was searching for something like it. The first mention of it comes years after de Leon's death, from a history written by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés titled Historia general y natural de las Indias, published in 1535. Oviedo had been a political ally of Diego Columbus—the man whose court maneuverings had led to de Leon losing his position as Governor of Puerto Rico—and most historians have concluded that his account of de Leon's expedition was a hatchet job intended to discredit a long-dead political rival. Oviedo depicted de Leon as an uneducated and gullible rube who was fooled by some Native legends of a Fountain of Youth and who went storming off to Bimini to find it, only to get himself killed by his rash actions. Medical practices in the 16thcentury, of course, left much to be desired, and treatment at the hands of a doctor was just as likely to kill you as whatever it was that ailed you. It was a common belief at the time that mineral waters had healing and curative powers, and natural warm springs and mineral baths were popular places for the sick to gather for “treatment”. But there is no indication of any widespread belief that any such “fountain” could grant immortality or eternal youth. The whole idea seems to have been an invention by Oviedo, solely to discredit de Leon. Nevertheless, over the years the legend of the Fountain of Youth has taken on an immortal life of its own, and over the centuries there have been several claims citing various places in Florida as “The Fountain of Youth” that was being sought by de Leon. In Punta Gorda, there is a tiny fountain of mineral water which has been claimed to be the spot de Leon was looking for. Not far away is another larger natural spring which makes the same claim, known today as Warm Mineral Springs. The next claimant is in St Petersburg, an hour north of Punta Gorda. In 1900, an entrepreneur named Edwin Tomlinson built a tourist fishing pier at 3rd Avenue South. At the foot of the pier, Tomlinson drilled down to the water table for an artesian well as a source of fresh water. In 1908, a doctor named Jessie Conrad, after visiting, bought the Pier and the well, and marketed it to tourists as “The Fountain of Youth”—the water’s high levels of natural sulphur and lithium supposedly gave it curative powers, and the site was shilled as a health spa. The Fountain of Youth Pier was damaged by the 1921 hurricane, but remained in operation until 1927, when it was torn down. Today the natural spring no longer flows, and the stone basin that enclosed it is now connected to the city’s water supply. The best-known of the “Fountain of Youth” claimants, though, is in St Augustine. This is yet another of Florida's many freshwater springs, where the underground aquifer reaches the surface. (Well, it used to: over the centuries the water table has receded and is now 250 feet below the surface—or at least that is what the sign here claims.) Like most of the others, the water is full of dissolved minerals, especially sulphur, which gives it the rather unpleasant odor and taste of rotten eggs. Tourists have apparently been visiting this site since the end of the Civil War. In 1875 a well was dug by a gardener from England named Henry Williams, and he sold the property in 1904 to a doctor from Chicago named Luella Day McConnell. McConnell had left her medical practice to prospect (unsuccessfully) for gold during the 1890s Yukon Gold Rush, and now she thought she saw a tourist gold mine in Florida. She now claimed to have found a large cross carved out of coquina that had been buried at the site of the well, and declared that it had been left by Ponce de Leon to mark the spot of the Fountain of Youth. In 1909 she opened the site as a tourist attraction. McConnell was killed in a car accident in 1927, and ownership of the site fell to Walter Fraser, who had already been employed as the attraction's manager. Fraser persuaded the Smithsonian Institution to begin a dig here in 1934, and they found a number of graves and artifacts which identified a part of the site as the location of the Mission Nombre de Dios, set up by the Spanish to convert the local Timucuan Natives, and another part of the site as a portion of the original camp set up by Pedro de Menendez Aviles when he founded the city of St Augustine in 1565. Today the site is advertised as the Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park. There is an exhibit of artifacts from the digs, talks and demonstrations by re-enactors, and tourists can buy souvenir bottles of water from the “fountain of youth”. Sadly, it will not cure anything or make you feel any younger: all it will really do is give you diarrhea and maybe make you barf. Some photos from a visit. The Archaeological Park The … uh … fountain. Not impressed? Neither was I. The gift shop sells little bottles of fountain water But the rest of the park was very nice A reconstruction of the Timucuan Native village that was here when the Spanish under Pedro Menendez de Aviles landed Inside one of the reconstructed huts This owl effigy log, first thought to be Timucuan, was later found to be from the Myakka Nation, and dates to around 1350 The archaeological remains of Menendez de Aviles’ camp were found here This cross commemorates the Spanish landing Blacksmith Armorer and crossbow Another armorer and matchlock musket Reconstructed church Inside the church There’s a nice little boardwalk nature trail [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/23/2150529/-Photo-Diary-Fountain-of-Youth-Archaeological-Park-St-Augustine-FL Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/