Spanish Colonial Pensacola

By VISIT FLORIDA staff
Published: July 15, 2009
Last Updated On: September 14, 2011

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Pensacola

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Florida's Spanish Colonial Heritage Trail

Carlos de Sigüenza, a famous Mexican intellectual, saw Pensacola as a sought-after prize.

"I hereby assert that this bay is the finest jewel possessed by His Majesty...not only here in America but in all his kingdom." – Carlos de Sigüenza to the Viceroy of Mexico, June 1, 1693

The famous Mexican intellectual, Carlos de Sigüenza, who visited the American Gulf Coast in 1693, recognized in Pensacola Bay the rare qualities that made it a highly sought after prize. It was the first great bay in North America and proved irresistible to European kings and bureaucrats of the early modern age--those of Spain, France, and England who were waging a struggle for supremacy in the Gulf region and the wider Atlantic World. The bay’s attributes of a deep water and sheltered natural harbor not only captivated European princes and policymakers but also the wife of a future American president- Rachael Jackson.

After a three-year French occupation of Pensacola Bay (1719-1722), the Spanish returned to Pensacola, establishing Presidio Santa Rosa Pensacola (1722-1752) on the barrier island just off shore.

Tristán de Luna founded the first European settlement on Pensacola Bay in August 1559. When the settlement was destroyed by a hurricane one month later, Spain lost its chance to monopolize the northern Gulf Coast in the sixteenth century, opening the door to English and French designs in the seventeenth century.

By the time the Spanish returned to Pensacola Bay in 1698, the French and English possessed colonies stretching from Canada to the Caribbean and were poised to colonize Louisiana and Georgia. In response to French threats, Andrés de Arriola founded "First Pensacola," Presidio Santa María de Galve (1698-1719), carving out a tenuous foothold in an increasingly contested Gulf region.

Arriola’s successors faced ever greater threats from Spain’s European rivals. When a Frenchman ascended to the Spanish throne in 1701, the French at neighboring Mobile became useful allies but the English in Carolina became implacable enemies. In the War of Spanish Succession, known as Queen Anne’s War in North America, Britons and their Creek allies raided deep into Spanish Florida. Pensacola residents held out against the English-Creek onslaught, before falling to the previously allied French in 1719, during the War of the Quadruple Alliance.

After a three-year French occupation of Pensacola Bay (1719-1722), the Spanish returned to Pensacola, establishing Presidio Santa Rosa Pensacola (1722-1752) on the barrier island just off shore.  Following a devastating hurricane in 1752, island residents relocated to the mainland and officially founded Presidio San Miguel (1757-1763). This ephemeral frontier footprint is the foundation of the modern city of Pensacola.

 
During the British colonial period (1763-1781), Pensacola evolved from a Spanish frontier outpost into a vibrant town and with a growing economy built around naval stores and the deer skin trade. When Spanish officials returned to Pensacola in 1781, they hoped to maintain the economic prosperity that the British had developed. During this era known as the "Second Spanish Period" (1781-1821), officials failed to maintain the economic prosperity and attempted with futility to hold back the tide of American influence that swept over West Florida and Pensacola. The newly acquired territory was a vibrant mix of ethnicities and cultures, adding a decidedly robust pinch of spice to the melting pot that the United States would become.

Personified by the tough hewn frontiersmen and future U.S. president, Andrew Jackson, the American aggression that engulfed West Florida, brought to a close Pensacola’s colonial period in 1821. Jackson’s wife, Rachel, wrote glowingly of Pensacola Bay in a letter to friend, Eliza Kingsley, in July of that year: "The most beautiful water prospect I ever saw; and from ten o’clock in the morning until ten at night we have the finest sea breeze. There is something in it so exhilarating, so pure, so wholesome, it enlivens the whole system." In Rachel Jackson’s assessment of the bay, one hears the echoes of Carlos de Sigüenza’s 1693 tribute.