People first reached Florida at least 12,000 years ago. The animal population included most mammals that we know today.

In addition, many other large mammals that are now extinct (such as the saber-tooth tiger, mastodon, giant armadillo, and camel) roamed the land.

During the period prior to contact with Europeans, native societies of the peninsula developed cultivated agriculture, traded with other groups in what is now the southeastern United States, and increased their social organization, reflected in large temple mounds and village complexes.

Written records about life in Florida began with the arrival of the Spanish explorer and adventurer Juan Ponce de León in 1513.

On another voyage in 1521, Ponce de León landed on the southwestern coast of the peninsula, accompanied by two-hundred people, fifty horses, and numerous beasts of burden.

His colonization attempt quickly failed because of attacks by native people.

However, Ponce de León’s activities served to identify Florida as a desirable place for explorers, missionaries, and treasure seekers.

Spain was not the only European nation that found Florida attractive.

Two years later, fellow Frenchman René Goulaine de Laudonnière established Fort Caroline at the mouth of the St. Johns River, near present-day Jacksonville.

These French adventurers prompted Spain to accelerate her plans for colonization.

Menéndez arrived in 1565 at a place he called San Augustín (St. Augustine) and established the first permanent European settlement in what is now the United States.

He accomplished his goal of expelling the French, attacking and killing all settlers except for non-combatants and Frenchmen who professed belief in the Roman Catholic faith.

Led by Colonel James Moore, the Carolinians and their Creek Indian allies attacked Spanish Florida in 1702 and destroyed the town of St. Augustine.

Two years later, they destroyed the Spanish missions between Tallahassee and St. Augustine, killing many native people and enslaving many others.

The French continued to harass Spanish Florida’s western border and captured Pensacola in 1719, twenty-one years after the town had been established.

Britain gained control of Florida in 1763 in exchange for Havana, Cuba, which the British had captured from Spain during the Seven Years’ War (1756–63).

The British called these people of Creek Indian descent Seminolies, or Seminoles.

In 1784 it regained control of the rest of Florida as part of the peace treaty that ended the American Revolution.

Finally, after several official and unofficial U.S. military expeditions into the territory, Spain formally ceded Florida to the United States in 1821, according to terms of the Adams-Onís Treaty.

As Florida’s population increased through immigration, so did pressure on the federal government to remove the Indian people from their lands.

The Indian population was made up of several groups—primarily, the Creek and the Miccosukee people; and many African American refugees lived with the Indians.

Indian removal was popular with white settlers because the native people occupied lands that white people wanted and because their communities often provided a sanctuary for runaway slaves from northern states.

This war, the most significant of the three conflicts between Indian people and U.S. troops in Florida, began over the question of whether Seminoles should be moved westward across the Mississippi River into what is now Oklahoma.

Tallahassee was the only southern capital east of the Mississippi River to avoid capture during the war, spared by southern victories at Olustee (1864) and Natural Bridge (1865).

Potential investors became interested in enterprises that extracted resources from the water and land.

The development of industries throughout the state prompted the construction of roads and railroads on a large scale.

Beginning in the 1870s, residents from northern states visited Florida as tourists to enjoy the state’s natural beauty and mild climate.

Steamboat tours on Florida’s winding rivers were a popular attraction for these visitors.

The growth of Florida’s transportation industry had its origins in 1855, when the state legislature passed the Internal Improvement Act.

Like legislation passed by several other states and the federal government, Florida’s act offered cheap or free public land to investors, particularly those interested in transportation.

The act, and other legislation like it, had its greatest effect in the years between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of World War I.

During this period, many railroads were constructed throughout the state by companies owned by Henry Flagler and Henry B. Plant, who also built lavish hotels near their railroad lines.

The Internal Improvement Act stimulated the initial efforts to drain the southern portion of the state in order to convert it to farmland.

These development projects had far-reaching effects on the agricultural, manufacturing, and extractive industries of late-nineteenth-century Florida.

The citrus industry especially benefitted, since it was now possible to pick oranges in south Florida; put them on a train heading north; and eat them in Baltimore, Philadelphia, or New York in less than a week.

In 1898 national attention focused on Florida, as the Spanish-American War began.

By the turn of the century, Florida’s population and per capita wealth were increasing rapidly; the potential of the “Sunshine State” appeared endless.

Severe hurricanes swept through the state in the 1926 and 1928, further damaging Florida’s economy.

By the time the Great Depression began in the rest of the nation in 1929, Floridians had already become accustomed to economic hardship.

A quarantine was established, and troops set up roadblocks and checkpoints to search vehicles for any contraband citrus fruit.

Female citizens won the right to vote in 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution became law.

In 1937, the requirement that voters pay a “poll tax” was repealed, allowing poor African American and white Floridians to have a greater voice in government.

Highway and airport construction accelerated so that, by war’s end, Florida had an up-to-date transportation network ready for use by residents and the visitors who seemed to arrive in an endless stream.

One of the most significant trends of the postwar era has been steady population growth, resulting from large migrations to the state from within the U.S. and from countries throughout the western hemisphere, notably Cuba and Haiti.

African American citizens, joined by Governor LeRoy Collins and other white supporters, fought to end racial discrimination in schools and other institutions.

Tourism, cattle, citrus, and phosphate have been joined by a host of new industries that have greatly expanded the numbers of jobs available to residents.

The U.S. space program—with its historic launches from Cape Canaveral, lunar landings, and the development of the space shuttle program—has brought much media attention to the state.

Today, Floridians study their state’s long history to learn more about the lives of the men and women who shaped their exciting past.