Tolomato River

Matanzas Bay is a saltwater bay in St. Johns County, Florida; the entrance to the bay from the South Atlantic is via St. Augustine inlet. Technically this stretch of water running along the city's waterfront is part of the Matanzas River, though it is regularly referred to as a bay or harbor. Bodies of water that connect to the bay in addition to the South Atlantic are clockwise from the inlet: Salt Run: an inlet of Anastasia Island creating a peninsula of the eastern portion of Anastasia State Park. Matanzas River: a tidal channel; part of the Intracoastal Waterway which flows in an easterly direction then south for approximately 15 miles, separating Anastasia Island from the mainland. Another tidal channel the San Sebastian River flows westerly from the Matanzas River creating a peninsula of the original Spanish era section of St. Augustine. Hospital Creek: tidal channel flowing north from confluence of Matanzas Bay and North River. Creek in which Pedro Menéndez de Avilés sailed into and initially established St. Augustine on its mainland shore. Tolomato River (also known locally and historically in the British period as the North River): tidal channel flowing northMunicipalities: St. Augustine and Vilano Beach. Tides: The average fall of the tides in Matanzas Bay is 4.5 feet between high and low tide. Bridges: State road A1A crosses the bay via the Bridge of Lions which connects the mainland portion of St. Augustine with the portion of the city located on Anastasia Island. Wetlands: A large portion of the tidal wetlands directly fronting the bay have been obliterated due to construction of the seawall in the old quarter of St. Augustine and the construction of Davis Shores a residential development created on reclaimed land on Anastasia Island and a subsequent seawall. The portions of the Intracoastal Waterway connected to Matanzas Bay have wetlands of varying amounts and degrees of natural state. Parks: Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, Spanish era fort completed in 1675 and Anastasia State Park.

The National Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche is a Catholic Marian shrine located at the Nombre de Dios Mission in St. Augustine, Florida. Originally built in 1609 in honor of Our Lady of La Leche—a Marian apparition popular among the Spanish settlers in the area—it is the oldest shrine in the United States. It was elevated to national shrine status in 2019 and received a canonical coronation in 2021.

The Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind (FSDB) is a state-supported boarding school for deaf and blind children established in 1885, in St. Augustine, Florida, United States.

The Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park is a privately owned 15-acre (61,000 m2) park in St. Augustine, Florida, located along Hospital Creek, part of the Intracoastal Waterway. It has been touted as the likely 1513 Florida landing site of Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon, although no evidence has been found to substantiate this claim. Recent research by amateur historian Douglas Peck has placed another possible landing site in the vicinity of Melbourne Beach in Brevard County.The park contains a well claimed to be the freshwater source referred to by Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas in his Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las Islas y Tierra Firme del mar Océano and supposedly sought by Ponce de Leon, but there is no supporting evidence. Archaeological excavations made by Dr. Kathleen Deagan on the park's grounds in the 1990s uncovered remains of the first Spanish settlement and its fortifications in St. Augustine.

The Abbott Tract Historic District is a 33 acres (13 ha) historic district in St. Augustine, Florida. It is bounded by Matanzas Bay, Pine, San Marco, and Shenandoah Avenues. On July 21, 1983, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. It contains 124 contributing buildings.It is a 17 block area.The Abbott Tract is a section of historic St. Augustine that dates to 1860 when Lucy Abbott, a young woman in her 20s, arrived in St. Augustine. She began purchasing land north of the Castillo de San Marcos, and by the 1870s, the astute businesswoman owned a large tract of land north of the city. She built nine structures in the area which still stand — the first house dates from 1861 and the last several from between 1885 and 1894. The Abbott Tract saw rapid development until 1904 when 126 houses lined the streets. The area's development was primarily conceived, designed and developed for residential use.

The siege of St. Augustine was a military engagement that took place during June–July 1740. It involved a British attack on the city of St. Augustine in Spanish Florida and was a part of the much larger conflict known as the War of Jenkins' Ear.

The siege of St. Augustine occurred in Queen Anne's War during November and December 1702. It was conducted by English colonists from the Province of Carolina and their Indian allies, under the command of governor of Carolina James Moore, against the Spanish colonial fortress of Castillo de San Marcos at St. Augustine, in Spanish Florida. After destroying coastal Spanish communities north of St. Augustine, Moore's forces arrived at St. Augustine on 10 November, and immediately began siege operations. The Spanish governor, José de Zúñiga y la Cerda, had advance warning of their arrival, and withdrew civilians and food supplies into the fortress, and also sent messengers to nearby Spanish and French communities for relief. The English guns did little damage to the fortress walls, prompting Governor Moore to send an appeal to Jamaica for larger guns. The Spanish calls for relief were successful; a fleet sent from Havana, Cuba landed troops nearby on 29 December. Moore lifted the siege the next day, and was forced to burn many of his boats before retreating to Charles Town in disgrace.

The Castillo de San Marcos (Spanish for "St. Mark's Castle") is the oldest masonry fort in the continental United States; it is located on the western shore of Matanzas Bay in the city of St. Augustine, Florida. It was designed by the Spanish engineer Ignacio Daza, with construction beginning in 1672, 107 years after the city's founding by Spanish Admiral and conquistador Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, when Florida was part of the Spanish Empire. The fort's construction was ordered by Governor Francisco de la Guerra y de la Vega after a raid by the English privateer Robert Searles in 1668 that destroyed much of St. Augustine and damaged the existing wooden fort. Work proceeded under the administration of Guerra's successor, Manuel de Cendoya in 1671, and the first coquina stones were laid in 1672. The construction of the core of the current fortress was completed in 1695, although it would undergo many alterations and renovations over the centuries. When Britain gained control of Florida in 1763 pursuant to the Treaty of Paris, St. Augustine became the capital of British East Florida, and the fort was renamed Fort St. Mark until the Peace of Paris (1783) when Florida was transferred back to Spain and the fort's original name restored. In 1819, Spain signed the Adams–Onís Treaty which ceded Florida to the United States in 1821; consequently, the fort was designated a United States Army base and renamed Fort Marion, in honor of American Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion. The fort was declared a National Monument in 1924, and after 251 years of continuous military possession, was deactivated in 1933. The 20.48-acre (8.29 ha) site was subsequently turned over to the United States National Park Service. In 1942 the original name, Castillo de San Marcos, was restored by an Act of Congress.Castillo de San Marcos was attacked several times and twice besieged: first by English colonial forces led by Carolina Colony Governor James Moore in 1702, and then by English Georgia colonial Governor James Oglethorpe in 1740. However, possession of the fort has changed five times, all peaceful, among four different governments: Spain, 1695–1763 and 1783–1821, Kingdom of Great Britain, 1763–1783, and the United States, 1821–date (during 1861–1865, under control of the Confederate States of America). Owing to its strategic cannon placement and star-shaped design, the fort was never breached or taken by force throughout its various stages of sovereign ownership.Under United States control the fort was used as a military prison to incarcerate members of Native American tribes starting with the Seminole—including the famous war chief, Osceola, in the Second Seminole War—and members of western tribes, including Geronimo's band of Chiricahua Apache. The Native American art form known as Ledger Art had its origins at the fort during the imprisonment of members of the Plains tribes such as Howling Wolf of the southern Cheyenne.Although built in part by African slaves owned by the Spanish, the fort later served as one of the first entry points of fugitive slaves from British North America into Spanish Florida, where they were freed by the Spanish colonial authorities. This quickly led to the first free Black settlement in the future United States (Fort Mose, formed just north of St Augustine).Ownership of the Castillo was transferred to the National Park Service in 1933, and, along with the nearby St. Augustine Historic District, has been a popular tourist destination ever since.

Mission Nombre de Dios is a Catholic mission founded in 1565 in St. Augustine, Florida, on the west side of Matanzas Bay. It is part of the Diocese of St. Augustine and is likely the oldest extant mission in the continental United States. The National Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche, the oldest shrine in that region, is located on the mission grounds.

The Matanzas River is a body of water in St. Johns and Flagler counties in the U.S. state of Florida. It is a narrow saltwater bar-bounded estuary sheltered from the Atlantic Ocean by Anastasia Island. The river is part of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. The Matanzas River is 23 miles (37 km) in length and extends from St. Augustine Inlet southward to approximately 6.5 miles (10.5 km) south of the Matanzas Inlet on the southern tip of Anastasia Island. The waterbody connects ocean inlets in the Port of St. Augustine and at the Fort Matanzas National Monument. The Matanzas River does not flow in one direction, as it is tidally influenced by the two inlets. The river has a tidal range of up to 6 feet (1.8 m).The Matanzas River at St. Augustine was the main entrance to the historic city, America's oldest port. The body of water is often referred to as the Matanzas Harbor in the immediate vicinity of the city's waterfront. The southern portion of the Matanzas River was traditionally considered the "backdoor" to the city of St. Augustine, and control of the river was considered a strategic necessity for the early Spanish colony at St. Augustine. Spanish engineers and laborers built Fort Matanzas in the 18th century to control access to the river from Matanzas Inlet, about 14 miles (23 km) south of St. Augustine. The Matanzas River supports an extensive tidal marsh habitat. Extensive conservation efforts including the Matanzas marsh, Faver-Dykes State Park, Princess Place preservation area, Pellicer Place preservation area, Pellicer Creek Aquatic Preserve, the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve, and the Moses Creek conservation area have been established to preserve the ecosystem. The preserved areas include salt marshes, mangrove tidal wetlands, oyster bars, estuarine lagoons, upland habitat, and marine environments. The Matanzas River faces several pollution issues, mostly related to urbanization in St. Augustine and the northern portion of Anastasia Island. Three major bridges cross the Matanzas River: the Bridge of Lions and the Mickler-O'Connell Bridge carrying Florida State Road 312 between St. Augustine and Anastasia Island, and the Crescent Beach Bridge (Verle Allen Pope Bridge) carrying State Road 206 across the river to Crescent Beach. The Matanzas River was named by Spanish forces for a massacre, led by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés of Spain, of a group of several hundred shipwrecked French Huguenots from Fort Caroline, led by Jean Ribault. The Huguenots were executed somewhere near the present site of Matanzas Inlet in 1565. Menéndez had been ordered to kill all Protestants he found in the New World. "Matanzas" means "killings" or "slaughters" in Spanish. Matanzas is thus the tenth-oldest surviving European place-name in the US.

The Huguenot Cemetery (also known as the St. Augustine Public Burying Ground) in St. Augustine, Florida, located across from the historic City Gate was a Protestant burial ground between the years 1821 and 1884. The Spanish colonial city of St. Augustine, along with the entire Florida Territory became de facto American possessions after the 1819 signing of the Adams-Onis Treaty. The actual physical occupation of the city and Florida territory occurred in 1821. Prior to American occupation the Spanish city of St. Augustine was predominately Catholic and the only burial ground within the city, the Tolomato cemetery, was reserved for Catholics. Recognizing a need for a formal Protestant burial ground an area just outside the city gate was chosen by the new American administration in St. Augustine. The first burials occurred in 1821 just prior to a yellow fever epidemic which claimed the lives of a large numbers of the city's inhabitants. The cemetery until title to the cemetery property was acquired by the Rev. Thomas Alexander, who then turned over it to the Presbyterian Church in 1832, burials continued until 1884 when both Huguenot and Tolomato cemeteries were closed. The cemetery is believed to hold at least 436 burials according to city records. The cemetery although named "Huguenot Cemetery" isn't believed to contain any members of the Huguenots, a French Protestant sect started in the 16th century in France.

The Cubo Line was part of the defense system built by the Spanish to protect the presidio of St. Augustine (San Agustín) in the territory of Spanish Florida (La Florida) during the early years of the 18th century.