Florida History: The Statewide Guides

People first reached Florida at least 14,000 years ago, when sea level was so much lower that the Florida peninsula was more than twice its present size (Florida Department of State).

Those first Floridians were hunters and gatherers who lived mostly on small animals, plants, nuts and shellfish and settled near steady water, stone for tools and firewood. Over the centuries Florida native societies developed farming, traded across the Southeast and built large temple mounds and village complexes (Florida Department of State).

The Timucua of northern Florida and southern Georgia spoke dialects of one language without forming one nation, and when Europeans arrived in the 1500s they held over 19,000 square miles with a population likely about 200,000 (National Park Service). By 1800 few Timucua remained, and the Timucua people guide covers them.

When European ships first landed in Florida in the 16th century, Timucua, Apalachee, Ais, Tekesta and Calusa people lived across the peninsula (Florida Department of State). The Apalachee controlled the fertile area near the Tallahassee hills between the Ochlockonee and Aucilla rivers, while the Calusa, whose domain was ruled by a single chief, lived around Charlotte Harbor and the mouth of the Caloosahatchee River, and Calusa carvings recovered on Key Marco show great skill (Florida Department of State). The Apalachee civilization guide, the Calusa civilization guide and the guide to the Ais tribe of Florida's east coast cover each nation.

Juan Ponce de Leon came ashore on Florida's northeast coast between April 2 and April 8, 1513, and on September 8, 1565, Pedro Menendez de Aviles and 800 Spanish settlers founded St. Augustine (Florida Department of State; National Park Service).

Ponce de Leon called the land la Florida after Spain's Eastertime feast of flowers. Hernando de Soto began his expedition in 1539 and camped five months near present Tallahassee, Tristan de Luna planted a short-lived settlement at Pensacola Bay in 1559, and the French built Fort Caroline near the mouth of the St. Johns River in 1564 before Menendez drove them out (Florida Department of State). The Florida Department of State calls St. Augustine the first permanent European settlement in what is now the United States (Florida Department of State), and Castillo de San Marcos there preserves the oldest masonry fortification in the continental United States (National Park Service).

Spanish treasure ships shaped the Florida coast too. Heavily laden plate fleets rode the Gulf Stream through the straits along the Florida Keys, and hurricanes sometimes wrecked them on the reefs and shoals of the east coast (Florida Department of State). The 1715 treasure fleet guide covers the best known wreck, the St. Augustine founding (1565) guide covers the landing, the Spanish colonial period guide spans 1513 to 1821, and the Jonathan Dickinson castaway (1696) guide follows a shipwrecked party on the Florida east coast.

For a field trip, the Florida Spanish Colonial Heritage Trail is a 64-page guidebook to more than 50 Spanish heritage sites in Florida dating from 1513 to 1821, with St. Augustine and Pensacola as landmark areas (Florida Department of State).

Florida passed from Spain to Britain in 1763, back to Spain by 1784, and to the United States under the Adams-Onis Treaty in 1821, then became the 27th state on March 3, 1845 (Florida Department of State; Florida Department of State).

Britain gained Florida in 1763 in exchange for Havana, which it had taken during the Seven Years' War, and Spain evacuated the province (Florida Department of State). After the 1821 cession Andrew Jackson set up the territorial government, the two Floridas were merged, and Tallahassee, established in 1824, became the capital because it sat halfway between St. Augustine and Pensacola (Florida Department of State).

The territory had 54,477 people by 1840, and enslaved African Americans made up almost half of them (Florida Department of State). At statehood William D. Moseley was elected the first governor of Florida, and by 1850 the population was 87,445 (Florida Department of State). The British period (1763 to 1783) guide, the Florida territorial period (1822 to 1845) guide and the Florida statehood (1845) guide take each step in turn.

Three Seminole wars ended on May 8, 1858 with more than 3,000 Seminoles moved west of the Mississippi, and Florida left the Union on January 10, 1861 (Department of State; statehood).

The Department of State page on the Seminoles says roughly 200 to 300 remained in Florida after 1858, hidden in the swamps (Florida Department of State).

The Second Seminole War, 1835 to 1842, was the most significant of the three Florida conflicts, and the federal government spent $20 million trying to force Seminole removal to what is now Oklahoma (Florida Department of State). Osceola, the Seminole war leader, was captured on October 20, 1837, when U.S. troops said they wanted a truce to talk peace (Florida Department of State). The Seminoles of Florida call themselves the Unconquered People, and the Department of State page counts more than 2,000 living on six reservations at Hollywood, Big Cypress, Brighton, Immokalee, Fort Pierce and Tampa, a figure the page does not date (Florida Department of State). The Seminole history guide covers the Tribe from the wars to today.

Florida sent about 15,000 troops to the Confederacy, while more than 2,000 Floridians, Black and white, joined the Union army. Tallahassee was the only southern capital east of the Mississippi not taken, thanks to Confederate wins at Olustee in 1864 and Natural Bridge in 1865, until federal troops occupied it on May 10, 1865 (Florida Department of State). Congressional Reconstruction in Florida began in 1868. The Civil War in Florida guide covers the war years, and the civil rights era in Florida guide picks up the long struggle for equal rights.

Florida's 1855 Internal Improvement Act offered cheap or free public land to investors, and companies owned by Henry Flagler and Henry Plant built railroads throughout the state (Florida Department of State).

The act had its greatest effect between the end of the Civil War and World War I, and Flagler and Plant also built lavish hotels near their railroad lines (Florida Department of State). In the last quarter of the nineteenth century Florida cattle raising grew in importance, cigar making took root in immigrant communities, sponge harvesting thrived at Tarpon Springs and phosphate was mined in the southwest (Florida Department of State). Rail lines let a south Florida orange reach Baltimore, Philadelphia or New York in less than a week, and in 1898 Tampa was the main staging area for U.S. troops bound for Cuba (Florida Department of State). The Flagler era railroad guide and the Plant System railroad guide cover the two rail empires, the Florida cracker culture and cattle guide covers the ranges, the Key West cigar era guide covers the factories, and the Florida tourism history pre-Disney guide covers the northern visitors who began arriving in the 1870s.

By the end of World War I land developers had arrived, more Americans owned automobiles, some buyers moved onto land made from drained swamps, and Florida land was sold and resold at inflated prices (Florida Department of State). The bubble burst in 1926 when money and credit ran out. Severe hurricanes in 1926 and 1928 followed, and the 1929 Mediterranean fruit fly cut Florida citrus production by about 60 percent (Florida Department of State). Voting rights widened in the same years: women won the vote in 1920, Florida repealed its poll tax in 1937, and in 1944 the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed all-white primaries (Florida Department of State). The Florida land boom (1920s) guide and the guide to the 1930s and the New Deal in Florida cover these decades.

World War II turned Florida into a major training center for soldiers, sailors and aviators, and postwar migration from other states, Cuba and Haiti made Florida the third most populous state (Florida Department of State).

Highway and airport construction accelerated so that by the end of the war Florida had an up-to-date transportation network, and since then electronics, plastics, construction, real estate and international banking have joined tourism, cattle, citrus and phosphate (Florida Department of State). The World War II bases and training guide covers the camps and airfields, and Florida's postwar population boom, 1945 to 1970 guide covers the growth that followed.

On July 24, 1950, Bumper 8 became the first rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, a two-stage V-2 and WAC Corporal fired from Launch Complex 3 (NASA). The Cape Canaveral launch history guide carries the story from that pad to crewed flight. Newcomers from abroad have their own Florida guides: Cuban immigration waves, the Mariel boatlift (1980) and Vietnamese refugees in Florida (1975).

One practical note for October 2026: the Museum of Florida History is currently closed due to repairs to the plaza level of the R.A. Gray Building, and its visit page lists other ways to connect during the temporary closure, including Museum on the Move, the Knott House Museum and the Union Bank Museum (Museum of Florida History).

The Florida history section holds 27 statewide guides, listed below in rough time order from the first Florida nations to the refugees of 1975 and 1980, each with the question it answers and one key fact.