Caching & Sightseeing in St. Augustine 3/14/2010

We were off bright and early into St Augustine to do some caching and sightseeing to see how much we remember about the city since we were here last.

Our first cache was located at the St Augustine Visitor's Center where you went in a asked for the geocache and they gave you the ammo box in which the cache was located. After we signed the log and got coords for the only benchmark in the state of Florida we walked outside to find the actual benchmark. This benchmark is 4 inches in diameter and has a stud on the bottom that is 3 inches long that protrudes into the concrete. The concrete pedestal is approximately 5 foot deep and 12 inches in diameter with the lower part of the base approximately 24 inches in diameter and is very unusual to only have only one located in a whole state. After we found the benchmark and Mom took my picture near it we walked around and saw the Fountains of San Francisco which is one of similar design to one found in Avilés, a sister city in Spain and the birthplace of the city’s founder, Pedro Menéndez. Famous as an Avilés landmark, the original fountain was constructed as part of a late sixteenth century public works project that brought fresh water into the city. Constructed decades after the founding of St. Augustine, and still functioning today, the Caños de San Francisco is one of Avilés most renowned historic landmarks. Key to the fountain’s replication was securing molds for the structure’s most distinctive feature: six stone carved faces with water spouts for mouths. Castings of the original masks were created and donated to the people of St. Augustine by the Mayor of Avilés, Santiago Rodríguez Vega during an official visit two years ago. We also saw the Spanish Trail Zero Milestone which was a marker for the end of the Spanish Trail a auto route that spanned the country with a full 3,000 miles of roadway from ocean to ocean crossing 67 counties and eight states along the Southern border of the United States. There are milestones at both ends of the trail and then there is this large, five ton, Texas granite boulder located at Military Plaza outside the San Antonio City Hall, marking the center (Mile 0) of the trail.

Next cache was a virtual cache located at the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Augustine a very very lovely church. The city of St. Augustine was founded and established in 1565 by Don Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. He began his adventure by sailing from the port of Cádiz, Spain. On August 28 of that year his expedition first sighted land along the east coast of Florida (the area that is today Cape Canaveral). It was the feast day of Saint Augustine of Hippo, August 28. Menéndez decided to give that saint’s name to his first settlement. He continued sailing north along the coast, eventually coming to the harbor of a native tribe of the Timucuan nation. Some of the Menéndez’s party landed on September 6 with Menéndez himself landing on September 8, the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Upon coming ashore, Menéndez was presented a cross to kiss by Father López de Mendoza Grajales as the hymn Te Deum Laudamus was sung. The celebration of a Mass followed immediately, and thus began the story of the establishment of the oldest permanently occupied European settlement in what is now the United States of America, and, at the same time, the beginnings of what would be the Cathedral Parish.
The site where the founding of St. Augustine occurred is now the Mission Nombre de Dios. There the first Mass of the new settlement was celebrated. Menéndez’s expedition carried with it four diocesan priests who ministered to the first settlers. What would become the eventual city of St. Augustine would be started south of that site and the first parish church of which we have record would be built at the southeastern corner of today’s Plaza. Spanish Franciscans came to evangelize the Indians. From St. Augustine two chains of missions developed as far north as St. Catherine’s Island, Georgia, and westward across the interior as far as Tallahasse.
St. Augustine was pillaged and burned to the ground (including the parish church) in 1586 by the English corsair Francis Drake. The citizens rebuilt their city and church, but it was obvious that they needed greater security.
The construction of Castillo de San Marcos, a stone fortress, began in 1672. It’s completion in 1696 allowed the town to survive a siege by Carolina Governor James Moore, who attacked and burned St. Augustine in 1702. Again, the parish church was destroyed. Mass was celebrated thereafter in the chapel of La Soledad Hospital, until 1763, when Florida was ceded to Great Britain as part of the First Treaty of Paris concluding the French and Indian War.
While Catholicism may have seemed dead in Florida from the arrival of the English, since all the Catholic Spaniards departed for Caribbean ports, the arrival of a workforce composed of Minorcans, Italians, and Greeks in 1767 at what is now New Smyrna Beach led to the resurgence of the Catholic faith on the peninsula and, eventually, in the City of St. Augustine. When Andrew Turnbull’s plantation in New Smyrna began to fail in 1777, the laborers, under the leadership of Francisco Pellicer and Father Pedro Camps, sought refuge in St. Augustine. With their arrival, a rebirth of the faith in the city took place. When Britain ceded Florida back to Spain in 1784, Spanish Catholicism returned, as well
In 1786, the Spanish crown ordered the construction of a new parish church for St. Augustine. The property bounded by St. George Street on the west, Treasury St. on the north and the plaza to the south was chosen as the site. The cornerstone was laid in 1793 and the church was completed in August 1797. The first Mass was celebrated on December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.
In 1857, all of Florida east of the Apalachicola River was established as a Vicariate Apostolic and placed under the leadership of Bishop Agustin Verot. In 1861, Verot was named as Bishop of Savannah while retaining his duties in Florida. On March 11, 1870, the Diocese of St. Augustine was created and Bishop Verot, at his request, was named its first bishop. The parish church was subsequently raised to be the Cathedral for the new diocese.
On April 12, 1887, a fire that started in the St. Augustine Hotel eventually spread to the Cathedral. Bishop John Moore, the second Bishop of St. Augustine, made a national appeal for funds to help in its rebuilding. The addition of transcepts allowed for the restored church to be enlarged. At the same time, the bell tower was built and made the Cathedral a grand sight to behold.
As the City of St. Augustine approached the 400th anniversary of its founding, Archbishop Joseph P. Hurley (the sixth Bishop of St. Augustine) commissioned the renovation of the Cathedral as one of the Diocese’s contributions to the quadricentennial efforts. (The others included the construction of a 204foot-high cross – the “Beacon of Faith” – along with the construction of a Prince of Peace Votive Church on the grounds of the Mission.) The Cathedral’s renovation allowed for the liturgical changes of the Second Vatican Council to be addressed. This included the addition of the Blessed Sacrament Chapel. The renovated Cathedral was dedicated on March 9, 1966 by William Cardinal Conway, Archbishop of Armagh (Ireland). On December 4, 1976, Pope Paul VI raised the Cathedral to the status of minor basilica. It was the 27th American church to be honored as such by the Holy See.
Today the Cathedral Parish continues the nearly 450-year history of the Catholic faith in St. Augustine, in Florida, and in the United States. The parish also serves St. Benedict the Moor Church, built in 1889 in the city’s historic Lincolnville area to care for the spiritual needs of those who had recently been freed as slaves.
We found the statue where we got our information for the cache and then took a walk inside to look at the church which was beautiful.

Next cache was another virtual located outside the walls of the Castillo San Marcos which is the Spanish built fort in the city. It was known as Fort Marion from 1821 until 1942, and Fort St. Mark from 1763 until 1784 while under British control. The Castillo is a masonry star fort made of a stone called coquina, literally "little shells", made of ancient shells that have bonded together to form a type of stone similar to limestone. Workers were brought in from Havana, Cuba, to construct the fort. The coquina was quarried from Anastasia Island across the bay from the Castillo, and ferried across to the construction site. Construction lasted twenty-three years, being completed in 1695. The cache was located at the Hot Shot Furnace which was a structure for heating cannon balls to be shot at wooden vessels and to set them on fire. If you would like to read the history of the fort, which is really to long to put here you can go to this web site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castillo_de_San_Marcos.

The next cache was nothing but a magnetic key holder under a paper box but it was a location that had some historical significance. In addition to being a national tourist destination and the continental United States' oldest city settled by Europeans, St. Augustine was also a pivotal site for the civil rights movement in 1963 and 1964. Despite the 1954 Supreme Court act in Brown v. Board of Education, which ruled that the "separate but equal" legal status of public schools made those schools inherently unequal, St. Augustine still had only 6 black children admitted into white schools. The homes of two of the families of these children were burned by local segregationists while other families were forced to move out of the county because the parents were fired from their jobs.
The demonstrations came to a climax when a group of black and white protesters jumped into the swimming pool at the Monson Motor Lodge, an entirely white hotel, where several other protests had been held. In response to the protest the owner of the hotel, James Brock, who was a usually shy and passive man, was photographed pouring muriatic acid into the pool to get the protesters out. Photographs of this, and of a policeman jumping into the pool to arrest them, were broadcast around the world and became some of the most famous images of the entire civil rights movement. The motel and pool were demolished in March, 2003, taking away a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement.

Next cache was also another virtual at the location of The Old Senator a over 600 year old oak tree. The tree has stood there as a testament to Ponce de Leon's discovery of FLorida and the Fountain of Youth which is about 600 feet away.

Our last cache also a virtual which had to do with Castillo San Marcos Fort and the quarry where the stone was taken to build the fort. First we had to visit the fort and take a picture in front of it. Spanish colonists built the fort from coquina rock quarried from Anastasia Island. It is the oldest masonry and only extant 17th century fort in North America. Next part of the cache was we had to go to the quarry where the coquina was taken and take some pictures and answer 3 questions about the site. The history of the coquina we felt is very interesting.
Coquina rock links Anastasia Island to the charismatic architecture and history of St. Augustine. More than 300 years ago, Native American Indians, enslaved Africans, and the Spanish worked coquina quarries of Anastasia Island to construct the Castillo de San Marcos fortress. In Anastasia State Park you may take a short walk down a shaded and signed trail to view the site of these labors.
When the quarries were active, St. Augustine (founded in 1565) was a struggling outpost of Spain’s American empire. Spanish soldiers built their homes and forts out of local pine, palm, and palmetto, but these wooden settlements were repeatedly destroyed or burned by pirates and raiders. Soon the Spanish discovered a better building material on Anastasia Island: coquina rock.
Acquisition of coquina rock was difficult, but resulted in durable and solid buildings. The workers hewed out squares of the relatively soft, wet stone with hand-tools and loaded them onto carts. Oxen dragged these heavy loads to the water, where the blocks were barged across Matanzas Bay to the town of St. Augustine.
Finally, in 1671, large-scale quarrying began in the stone pits. Anastasia Island was even called "Cantera", Spanish for "quarry".
Early on, quarrying was limited by manpower, engineering skills, and money. In 1598 workers had cut out enough coquina blocks to build a gunpowder storage magazine. Finally, in 1671, the Spanish embarked on large-scale quarrying on Anastasia Island. At this time, the island was called “Cantera,” Spanish for quarry.
The people of St. Augustine didn’t realize they had happened upon an amazing defensive material. As the soft stone was exposed to air, it hardened. The Spanish waterproofed coquina stone with plaster and paint, so the coarse rock structures you see today, such as the Castillo de San Marcos and city gates, would have looked more refined. However, when besieging ships bombarded the Castillo, the walls simply absorbed the cannon balls. The Castillo de San Marcos was never captured in battle, thanks in at least part to the rock made of tiny shells, coquina.
Spanish, British, and Americans in turn prized coquina as a building material and went to great lengths to obtain it. By the late 1700s, Native American Indian populations were decimated and the Spanish primarily employed enslaved Africans to work the quarries. The quarries were not exhausted and today some coquina is still quarried commercially.
Coquina rock is part of a sedimentary formation that underlies much of the Atlantic shore of Florida.
The story of coquina rock begins in West Africa, where a similar rock formation is found. Coquina forms a sedimentary structure underlying much of the Atlantic shore of Florida, and geologists believe eons ago, before the continents drifted apart, these formations were connected. Sand and Donax variabilis clam shells accumulated when sea levels were higher and the area was underwater. Later, during a glacial period about 125,000 – 100,000 years ago, the sea level dropped. Rain dissolved calcium carbonate from the shells, cementing the mix of quartz and shells together into coquina rock.
The word "coquina" means "tiny shell" in Spanish. It was the name they gave to the Donax variabilis clam that was abundant on the northeast Florida beaches. It is the predominant shell in the rock. As you might have read it is very interesting how they mined it and built the fort from it. We finished the cache and we were off back to the coach for the afternoon. We had dinner and watched TV and called it a day. Until next time we love and miss all you guys. Mom & Dad Dori & Dick