St. Augustine, Florida

Founded in 1565 by Spanish settlers, St. Augustine it is the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in what is now the contiguous United States. The city served as the capital of Spanish Florida for over 200 years. It became the capital of British East Florida in 1763 and continued as the capital after the 1783 Treaty of Versailles in the Second Spanish Period. Spain ceded Florida to the United States in 1819, and St. Augustine was designated one of the two alternating capitals of the Florida Territory, the other being Pensacola, upon ratification of the Adams–Onís Treaty in 1821. The territorial government moved and made Tallahassee the permanent capital of Florida in 1824.

We visited St. Augustine, Florida on New Years Day 2026 while staying at the Encore Bulow RV Resort near Flagler Beach about an hour away. It was busy in Saint Augustine that day, and we were happy that we had booked the hop-on-hop-off Old Town Trolley tour which allowed us to park remotely and take the shuttle around town at our own pace. The St. Augustine trolley tour has over 20 stops, is 8.5 miles long, and takes about 90 minutes from start to finish if you were just to stay on the trolley bus. Another benefit of the Trolley tour is that the drivers provide commentary and historical information on the city as you travel around.

Our first stop was to visit Castillo de San Marcos, the oldest masonry fort in the continental United States. The fort has been operated by the National Park Service since 1933 as the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument. It was designed by the Spanish engineer Ignacio Daza, with construction beginning in 1672, 107 years after the city’s founding while the city was still under Spanish control.

Castillo de San Marcos was attacked several times and twice besieged. Possession of the fort has changed five times, all peaceful, among four different governments: Spain, 1695–1763 and 1783–1821, Kingdom of Great Britain, 1763–1783, and the United States, 1821–date (during 1861–1865, under control of the Confederate States of America). Owing to its strategic cannon placement and star-shaped design, the fort was never breached or taken by force throughout its various stages of sovereign ownership.

The Castillo is a masonry star fort made of a stone called coquina (Spanish for “small shells”), which consists of ancient shells that have bonded together to form a sedimentary rock similar to limestone. Native Americans from Spain’s nearby missions did most of the labor, with additional skilled workers brought in from Havana, Cuba. Construction began on October 2, 1672, and lasted twenty-three years, with completion in 1695.

After visiting the Castillo, we walked along St. George Street which is one of the most recognizable and visited areas in St. Augustine. It’s a pedestrian-only route through Historic Downtown, lined with colonial-era buildings, courtyards, and a mix of museums, restaurants, shops, and historic landmarks. St. George Street follows a colonial roadbed first laid out in the 1700s. Many of its buildings are original structures or faithful reconstructions on historic foundations. Part way along St. George Street we stopped for a good lunch at the Burrito Works Taco Shop, and then a little further down the road we had dessert at the Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Store.

After getting back on the Trolley shuttle we toured around some more areas of the city and saw some of the original historic St. Augustine homes before hopping off to walk around the outside of the original Hotel Ponce de Leon, and now Flagler College.  Originally a luxury hotel built by millionaire developer and Standard Oil co-founder Henry M. Flagler, built between 1885–1887, the winter resort opened in January 1888. The hotel was designed in the Spanish Colonial Revival style and is the first of its kind constructed entirely of poured concrete, using the local coquina stone as aggregate. The hotel was one of the first buildings in the country wired for electricity from the onset, with the power being supplied by DC generators installed by Flagler’s friend, Thomas Edison. Since 1968, with the founding of Flagler College, the original building and grounds of the hotel serve as the centerpiece of the campus of Flagler College.

We also walked around the Hotel Alcazar across the street from Flagler College that was also constructed by Flagler using the same poured concrete method. Both hotels appealed to wealthy tourists who traveled south for the winter on his railroad, the Florida East Coast Railway. The Alcazar had a steam room, massage parlor, sulfur baths, gymnasium, a three-story ballroom, and the world’s largest indoor swimming pool; however, after years as an elegant winter resort for wealthy patrons, the hotel closed in 1932. In 1947 Chicago publisher Otto C. Lightner purchased the building to convert the old hotel into a hobbies museum. He used the space to house several collections, including his own extensive collection of Victorian era art. He then turned it over to the city of St. Augustine and the museum opened to the public in 1948 and operates to this day as the Lightner Museum.

Rather than take the trolley shuttle back to our parking spot we walked back along the Matanzas River which is part of the Intracoastal Waterway. We passed the pair of copies of the marble Medici lions that guard the entrance to the Bridge of Lions, a double-leaf bascule bridge that spans the Intracoastal Waterway and connects downtown St. Augustine to Anastasia Island across Matanzas Bay.

There was a lot to see in St. Augustine, and our one day visit took us around the highlights. The most interesting part of the visit for us was the Castillo de San Marcos. One could certainly spend several days exploring the city and looking at the historic buildings and neighborhoods in more depth. Photos from our visit are included below. Click on the thumbnails for full size images.