Centuries of History in St. Augustine

Ponce de León’s explorations helped identify Florida as a desirable place for settlement and missionary activity, which gave rise, in time, to the establishment of St. Augustine. That task fell, 50 years after Ponce de León’s activities, to Admiral Don Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, who was sent to secure Spanish holdings in the region and expel French settlers. On September 8, 1565, Menéndez and his water-weary companions landed in a small natural harbor and founded a fort and settlement, named for the saint on whose feast day they had first sighted land. One member of the expedition, Father Francisco López de Mendoza Grajales, recorded the triumphant moment in his diary:

On Saturday the eighth the General landed with many banners spread, to the sounds of trumpets and the salutes of artillery. As I had gone ashore the evening before, I took a cross and went to meet him, singing the hymn Te Deum Laudamus. The General, followed by all who accompanied him, marched up to the cross, knelt and kissed it. A large number of Indians watched these proceedings and imitated all that they saw done.

Then, under an open, wild sky, with ocean winds blowing through the encampment, the same winds that had borne the explorers so many miles from home, Father López celebrated the first parish Mass in what is now the United States. Today, this location is called the Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche, a peaceful patch of parklike greenery under gently rocking palms. Old, sun-blanched gravestones rest among the ferns, bearing names all but worn away by time and nearly lost to memory. In the middle of this place, nicknamed “the sacred acre,” nestles a small chapel, so covered in ivy that it has become a part of the landscape. Inside is a statue of Mary nursing Jesus. The visitor center at the shrine contains an informative and well-run little museum with authentic artifacts that tell of the desperate, early days of settlers and missionaries laboring under the blinding sun and weathering ocean-flung hurricanes, pirates, and British soldiers.

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