The Florida Panhandle is the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Florida; it is a strip of land roughly 200 miles (320 km) long and 50 to 100 miles wide, lying between Alabama on the north and the west, Georgia on the north, and the Gulf of Mexico to the south. Its eastern boundary is arbitrarily defined. In terms of population, major communities include Tallahassee, Pensacola, and Navarre.
Dog Island is located in the northwestern Florida Gulf coast, just 3.5 mi (5.6 km) off-shore from Carrabelle, in Franklin County, Florida. There is, by reservation, ferry transportation to Dog Island on weekends.
Bald Point State Park is a Florida State Park located south of Ochlockonee Bay, approximately seven miles southeast of Panacea, on St. James Island in Alligator Point, Tallahassee's closest beach, off U.S. 98, in Franklin County northwestern Florida. The address is 146 Box Cut. Park was named after Bald Point cape on eastern tip of St. James Island in Ochlockonee Bay.
The Apalachee are a Native American people who historically lived in the Florida Panhandle. They lived between the Aucilla River and Ochlockonee River, at the head of Apalachee Bay, an area known to Europeans as the Apalachee Province. They spoke a Muskogean language called Apalachee, which is now extinct.
Tocobaga was the name of a chiefdom, its chief, and its principal town during the 16th century. The chiefdom was centered around the northern end of Old Tampa Bay, the arm of Tampa Bay that extends between the present-day city of Tampa and northern Pinellas County. The exact location of the principal town is believed to be the archeological Safety Harbor Site, which gives its name to the Safety Harbor culture, of which the Tocobaga are the most well-known group.
Spanish Florida was the first major European land claim and attempted settlement in North America during the European Age of Discovery. La Florida formed part of the Captaincy General of Cuba, the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and the Spanish Empire during Spanish colonization of the Americas. While its boundaries were never clearly or formally defined, the territory was initially much larger than the present-day state of Florida, extending over much of what is now the southeastern United States, including all of present-day Florida plus portions of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Louisiana. Spain's claim to this vast area was based on several wide-ranging expeditions mounted during the 16th century. A number of missions, settlements, and small forts existed in the 16th and to a lesser extent in the 17th century; they were eventually abandoned due to pressure from the expanding English and French colonial settlements, the collapse of the native populations, and the general difficulty in becoming agriculturally or economically self-sufficient. By the 18th century, Spain's control over La Florida did not extend much beyond a handful of forts near St. Augustine, St. Marks, and Pensacola, all within the boundaries of present-day Florida.
The maritime history of Florida describes significant past events relating to the U.S. state of Florida in areas concerning shipping, shipwrecks, and military installations and lighthouses constructed to protect or aid navigation and development of the Florida peninsula.
The St. Marks Light is the second-oldest light station in Florida. It is located on the east side of the mouth of the St. Marks River, on Apalachee Bay.
Apalachee Bay is a bay in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico occupying an indentation of the Florida coast to the west of where the Florida peninsula joins the United States mainland. It is bordered by Taylor, Jefferson, Wakulla, and Franklin counties.
Florida's Forgotten Coast is a registered trademark coined in the early 1990s by the Apalachicola Bay Chamber of Commerce. The name is most commonly used to refer to a relatively quiet, undeveloped and largely uninhabited section of coastline stretching from Mexico Beach on the Gulf of Mexico to St. Marks on Apalachee Bay in the U.S. state of Florida. The nearest major cities are Tallahassee, about 90 miles (145 km) northeast of Apalachicola, and Panama City, home of Tyndall Air Force Base, about 60 miles (95 km) to the northwest.
The History of Leon County, Florida is a varied history of human habitation extending from 12,000 years ago to present. This includes Paleoindians, the Apalachee, the Seminole Indians, the British, Spanish, colonial Americans, and slaves.
Guale was a historic Native American chiefdom of Mississippian culture peoples located along the coast of present-day Georgia and the Sea Islands. Spanish Florida established its Roman Catholic missionary system in the chiefdom in the late 16th century.
Mensun Bound is a British maritime archaeologist born in Stanley, Falkland Islands. He is best known for directing the excavation of the Etruscan 6th-century BC shipwreck off Giglio Island, Italy, the oldest known shipwreck of the Archaic era, and the Hoi An Cargo which revolutionized the understanding of Ming-Vietnamese porcelain from Vietnam's art-historical Golden Age.
Beginning in the second half of the 16th century, the Kingdom of Spain established a number of missions throughout La Florida in order to convert the Native Americans to Christianity, to facilitate control of the area, and to prevent its colonization by other countries, in particular, England and France. Spanish Florida originally included much of what is now the Southeastern United States, although Spain never exercised long-term effective control over more than the northern part of what is now the State of Florida from present-day St. Augustine to the area around Tallahassee, southeastern Georgia, and some coastal settlements, such as Pensacola, Florida. A few short-lived missions were established in other locations, including Mission Santa Elena in present-day South Carolina, around the Florida peninsula, and in the interior of Georgia and Alabama.
George Robert Fischer was an American underwater archaeologist, considered the founding father of the field in the National Park Service. A native Californian, he did undergraduate and graduate work at Stanford University, and began his career with the National Park Service in 1959, which included assignments in six parks, the Washington, D.C. Office, and the Southeast Archaeological Center from which he retired in 1988. He began teaching courses in underwater archaeology at Florida State University in 1974 and co-instructed inter-disciplinary courses in scientific diving techniques. After retirement from the NPS his FSU activities were expanded and his assistance helped shape the university's program in underwater archaeology.
The indigenous peoples of Florida lived in what is now known as Florida for more than 12,000 years before the time of first contact with Europeans. However, the indigenous Floridians have largely died out with some completely by the early 18th century. Some Apalachees migrated to Louisiana, where their descendants now live; some were taken to Cuba and Mexico by the Spanish in the 18th century, and a few may have been absorbed into the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes.
The siege of St. Augustine occurred in Queen Anne's War during November and December 1702. It was conducted by English provincial forces from the Province of Carolina and their native allies, under the command of Carolina's governor James Moore, against the Spanish colonial fortress of Castillo de San Marcos at St. Augustine, in Spanish Florida.
Charles T. Meide, Jr., known as Chuck Meide, is an underwater and maritime archaeologist and currently the Director of LAMP, the research arm of the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum located in St. Augustine, Florida. Meide, of Syrian descent on his father's side, was born in Jacksonville, Florida, and raised in the nearby coastal town of Atlantic Beach. He earned BA and MA degrees in Anthropology with a focus in underwater archaeology in 1993 and 2001 from Florida State University, where he studied under George R. Fischer, and undertook Ph.D. studies in Historical Archaeology at the College of William and Mary starting the following year. Meide has participated in a wide array of shipwreck and maritime archaeological projects across the U.S., especially in Florida, and throughout the Caribbean and Bermuda and in Australia and Ireland. From 1995 to 1997 he participated in the search for, discovery, and total excavation of La Salle's shipwreck, La Belle, lost in 1686. From December 1997 to January 1998 he served as Co-Director of the Kingstown Harbour Shipwreck Project, an investigation sponsored by the Institute of Maritime History and Florida State University into the wreck of the French frigate Junon lost in 1780 in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. In 1999 he directed the Dog Island Shipwreck Survey, a comprehensive maritime survey of the waters around a barrier island off the coast of Franklin County, Florida, and between 2004 and 2006 he directed the Achill Island Maritime Archaeology Project off the coast of County Mayo, Ireland. Since taking over as Director of LAMP in 2006, he has directed the First Coast Maritime Archaeology Project, a state-funded research and educational program focusing on shipwrecks and other maritime archaeological resources in the offshore and inland waters of Northeast Florida. In 2009, during this project, Meide discovered the "Storm Wreck," a ship from the final fleet to evacuate British troops and Loyalist refugees from Charleston at the end of the Revolutionary War, which wrecked trying to enter St. Augustine in late December 1782. He led the archaeological excavation of this shipwreck site each summer from 2010 through 2015. Starting in 2016, Meide has directed the ongoing excavation of the "Anniversary Wreck," another 18th-century shipwreck believed to represent a merchant vessel lost while trying to enter St. Augustine.
The Pensacola were a Native American people who lived in the western part of what is now the Florida Panhandle and eastern Alabama for centuries before first contact with Europeans until early in the 18th century. They spoke a Muskogean language. They are the source of the name of Pensacola Bay and the city of Pensacola. They lived in the area until the mid-18th century, but were thereafter assimilated into other groups.
This is a timeline of the U.S. state of Florida.
