Escambia County is the westernmost and oldest county in the U.S. state of Florida. It is in the state's northwestern corner. At the 2020 census, the population was 321,905. Its county seat and largest city is Pensacola. Escambia County is included within the Pensacola-Ferry Pass-Brent, Florida, Metropolitan Statistical Area. The county population has continued to increase as the suburbs of Pensacola have developed.
Walton County is located on the Emerald Coast in the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Florida, with its southern border on the Gulf of Mexico. As of the 2020 census, the population was 75,305. Its county seat is DeFuniak Springs. The county is home to the highest natural point in Florida: Britton Hill, at 345 feet (105 m). Walton County is included in the Crestview–Fort Walton Beach–Destin Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Pensacola is the westernmost city in the Florida Panhandle, and the county seat and only incorporated city of Escambia County, Florida, United States. At the 2020 United States census, the population was 54,312. Pensacola is the principal city of the Pensacola Metropolitan Area, which had an estimated 502,629 residents in 2019.
West Florida was a region on the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico that underwent several boundary and sovereignty changes during its history. As its name suggests, it was formed out of the western part of former Spanish Florida, along with lands taken from French Louisiana; Pensacola became West Florida's capital. The colony included about two thirds of what is now the Florida Panhandle, as well as parts of the modern U.S. states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
East Florida was a colony of Great Britain from 1763 to 1783 and a province of Spanish Florida from 1783 to 1821. Great Britain gained control of the long-established Spanish colony of La Florida in 1763 as part of the treaty ending the French and Indian War. Deciding that the territory was too large to administer as a single unit, Britain divided Florida into two colonies separated by the Apalachicola River: East Florida with its capital in St. Augustine and West Florida with its capital in Pensacola. East Florida was much larger and comprised the bulk of the former Spanish territory of Florida and most of the current state of Florida. It had also been the most populated region of Spanish Florida, but before control was transferred to Britain, most residents – including virtually everyone in St. Augustine – left the territory, with most migrating to Cuba.
The Territory of Florida was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from March 30, 1822, until March 3, 1845, when it was admitted to the Union as the state of Florida. Originally the major portion of the Spanish territory of La Florida, and later the provinces of East and West Florida, it was ceded to the United States as part of the 1819 Adams–Onís Treaty. It was governed by the Florida Territorial Council.
Perdido River, historically Rio Perdido (1763), is a 65.4-mile-long (105.3 km) river in the U.S. states of Alabama and Florida; the Perdido, a designated Outstanding Florida Waters river, forms part of the boundary between the two states along nearly its entire length and drains into the Gulf of Mexico. During the early 19th century it played a central role in a series of rotating boundary changes and disputes among France, Spain, Great Britain, and the United States.
The Florida Panhandle is the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Florida; it is a salient 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 Panama City.
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 Plaza Ferdinand VII is an outdoor garden and park in the Historic Pensacola Village area of downtown Pensacola, Florida. It is located on Palafox Street between Government and Zaragoza Streets. It was named after Ferdinand VII of Spain, the King of Spain between 1813 and 1833. A National Historic Landmark, it is the site of the formal transfer of Florida to United States jurisdiction in 1821.
Cantonment is a town in Escambia County, Florida. It is a suburb of Pensacola, and is located in the Pensacola metropolitan Area. Cantonment is located north of Gonzalez, and south of Molino. It is centered around U.S. Route 29, and extends to the Perdido River to the west, and the Escambia River to the east.
Escambe was a Spanish Franciscan mission built in the 17th century in the Florida Panhandle, three miles northwest of the present-day town of Tallahassee, Florida. It was part of Spain's effort to colonize the region, and convert the Timucuan and Apalachee Indians to Christianity. The mission lasted until 1704, when it was destroyed by a group of Creek Indians and South Carolinians.
The Big Bend of Florida, United States, is an informally-named geographic region of North Florida where the Florida Panhandle transitions to the Florida Peninsula south and east of Tallahassee. The region is known for its vast woodlands and marshlands and its low population density relative to much of the state. The area is home to the largest single spring in the United States, the Alapaha Rise, and the longest surveyed underwater cave in the United States, the 32-mile (51 km) Wakulla-Leon Sinks cave system.
The history of Pensacola, Florida, begins long before the Spanish claimed founding of the modern city in 1698. The area around present-day Pensacola was inhabited by Native American peoples thousands of years before the historical era.
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.
"Indian Reserve" is a historical term for the largely uncolonized land in North America that was claimed by France, ceded to Great Britain through the Treaty of Paris (1763) at the end of the Seven Years' War—also known as the French and Indian War—and set aside for the First Nations in the Royal Proclamation of 1763. The British government had contemplated establishing an Indian barrier state in the portion of the reserve west of the Appalachian Mountains, and bounded by the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and the Great Lakes. British officials aspired to establish such a state even after the region was assigned to the United States in the Treaty of Paris (1783) ending the American Revolutionary War, but abandoned their efforts in 1814 after losing military control of the region during the War of 1812.
British West Florida was a colony of the Kingdom of Great Britain from 1763 until 1783, when it was ceded to Spain as part of the Peace of Paris.
Palafox Place is a major commercial area in downtown Pensacola, Florida, United States. It comprises three blocks of South Palafox Street, south of Garden Street and north of Government Street, which was formerly the main downtown shopping district.
Spanish West Florida was a province of the Spanish Empire from 1783 until 1821, when both it and East Florida were ceded to the United States.
San Joseph de Escambe was an Apalachee mission community established in 1741 at the present-day community of Molino, Florida along the Escambia River north of Pensacola, lending its name both to the river and later to Escambia County, Florida. Taking its name from an earlier Apalachee mission community named San Cosme y San Damián de Escambe located far to the east in Leon County, Florida, this later Escambe mission was inhabited by refugee Apalachee Indians, including chief Juan Marcos Isfani, who had previously settled near the mouth of the river in 1718, having gathered a group of Apalachee refugees who had lived among the Creek Indians since the 1704 English-Creek raids that destroyed the Apalachee Province. After twenty years along the northern Spanish frontier, the mission was burned in a Creek Indian raid on April 9, 1761, and its inhabitants resettled with the Yamasee Indian residents of San Antonio de Punta Rasa adjacent to modern Pensacola before relocating to Veracruz, Mexico along with the Spanish residents of Pensacola in 1763. The Apalachee and Yamasee were assisted in forming a new town north of Veracruz called San Carlos de Chachalacas along the river of the same name, and this town still exists today, though there is no documentation to demonstrate whether any of the Florida Indians who started the town still have any living descendants there.
