We're the oldest port as well as oldest city

We're the oldest port as well as oldest city



SUSAN R. PARKER
Special to The Record
Publication Date: 07/19/09


Recently we have started to recognize that St. Augustine is the nation's oldest port as well as its oldest city. On Sept. 8, 1565, when small boats brought the founders of our town through the inlet, the harbor became a port.

The transatlantic ships that carried the settlers from Europe to the Americas lay just offshore laden with supplies on that day. As the settlers brought the food, tools and weapons from the holds of the ships to the mainland, the port started its life as a gateway.

Not just boats came and went through the inlet. People, goods and ideas flowed in and out as well. The Spanish settlers arrived with familiar food that they could not grow with success in Florida.

They arrived with cloth and metal tools that fascinated the "locals," the Indians who were already here.

Through the port came Christianity. In St. Augustine, Christians have worshiped continually since that day in September 1565. The Spanish brought their ideas about how a society should be organized and put some of them in place immediately. The leader of the settlers, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, formally established the city of St. Augustine soon after knocking the marsh mud from his boots. St. Augustine very soon had a city council and courts, however, crude and simple they may seem to us today.

Through the port, they brought all sorts of ideas and practices -- on marriage, clothing, justice, reading and writing. The Spanish tried to mold the Indians to the "proper" way to do things--that is, in the European way. The outcome was often disastrous.

The impact of the port of St. Augustine was huge and its importance has gone largely unnoticed. As the years passed, other ports with better harbors and located at the mouths of rivers that offered access into the interior surpassed St. Augustine -- Boston, New York, Baltimore, Charleston and others. But they were established long after St. Augustine.

Today a group of residents is working toward the creation of a National Heritage Area with the oldest port in the nation at the core.


Click here to return to story:
http://www.staugustine.com/stories/071909/news_071909_042.shtml

© The St. Augustine Record