Dawn of an Empire: St. Augustine and the Spanish Founding of America

Before Jamestown.

Before Plymouth.

There was St. Augustine.

In 1565-fifty-five years before the Pilgrims set foot at Plymouth Rock-Spanish ships slipped along the Florida coast and anchored in a shallow inlet guarded by marsh and sand. What they built there would become the oldest continuously occupied European-founded city in the continental United States. Yet its story has been pushed to the margins of the American narrative.

Dawn of an Empire restores St. Augustine to its rightful place at t...