12,000 Years Ago
People first reached Florida at least 12,000 years ago. Florida peninsula was more than twice as large as it is now. The people who inhabited Florida at that time were hunters and gatherers, but rarely sought big game for food. Modern researchers think that their diet consisted of small animals, plants, nuts, and shellfish.
1513 Spanish Control
Written records about life in Florida began with the arrival of the Spanish explorer and adventurer Juan Ponce de Leon in 1513. Sometime between April 2 and April 8, Ponce de Leon waded ashore on the northeast coast of Florida, possibly near present-day St. Augustine. He called the area la Florida, in honor of Pascua florida ("feast of the flowers"), Spainos Eastertime celebration.
The oldest city in the United States, St. Augustine. King Phillip II of Spain named Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles, Spain's most experienced admiral, Governor of Florida, and instructed him to explore and to colonize the territory. When Menendez arrived off the coast of Florida, it was August 28, 1565, the Feast Day of St. Augustine. Eleven days later, he and his 600 soldiers and settlers came ashore at the site of the Timucuan Indian village of Seloy with banners flying and trumpets sounding. He hastily fortified the fledgling village and named it St. Augustine. (http://www.oldcity.com/pages/st-augustine-450th-celebration.php).
1763 British Control
Britain gained control of Florida in 1763 in exchange for Havana, Cuba, which the British had captured from Spain during the Seven Years' War (1756-63). Spain evacuated Florida after the exchange, leaving the province virtually empty. At that time, St. Augustine was still a garrison community with fewer than five hundred houses, and Pensacola also was a small military town.
1821 American Control
During the War of 1812 (1812-1815), Spain let Britain use Pensacola as a naval base. In 1814, American troops led by General Andrew Jackson stormed into Florida and seized Pensacola. During the First Seminole War (1817-1818), Jackson captured Fort St. Marks on the Gulf of Mexico. He then defeated the Seminole Indians. In 1819, Spain agreed to turn Florida over to the United States. The United States did not pay any money to Spain for Florida, however, it agreed to pay $5 million to U.S. citizens for property damages. After several official and unofficial U.S. military expeditions into the territory, Spain formally ceded Florida to the United States in 1821, according to terms of the Adams-On's Treaty.
1824 Tallahassee
As a territory of the United States, Florida was particularly attractive to people from the older Southern plantation areas of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, who arrived in considerable numbers. After territorial status was granted, the two Floridas were merged into one entity with a new capital city in Tallahassee. Established in 1824, Tallahassee was chosen because it was halfway between the existing governmental centers of St. Augustine and Pensacola.
1845 Statehood
Florida became the twenty-seventh state in the United States on March 3, 1845. William D. Moseley was elected the new state's first governor, and David Levy Yulee, one of Florida's leading proponents for statehood, became a U.S. Senator. By 1850 the population had grown to 87,445, including about 39,000 African American slaves and 1,000 free blacks.
1860 Presedential Election
The slavery issue began to dominate the affairs of the new state. Most Florida voters were white males, ages twenty-one years or older and did not oppose slavery. However, they were concerned about the growing feeling against slavery in the North, and during the 1850s they viewed the new anti-slavery Republican party with suspicion. In the 1860 presidential election, no Floridians voted for Abraham Lincoln. Shortly after President Lincoln's election, a special convention drew up an ordinance that allowed Florida to secede from the Union on January 10, 1861. Within several weeks, Florida joined other Southern states to form the Confederate States of America.
1926 The Great Depression
State government began to represent a larger proportion of its citizens. Female citizens won the right to vote in 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution became law. In 1937, the requirement that voters pay a "poll tax" was repealed, allowing poor African American and white Floridians to have a greater voice in government.
Florida's economic bubble burst in 1926, when money and credit ran out, and banks and investors abruptly stopped trusting the "paper" millionaires. Severe hurricanes swept through the state in the 1926 and 1928, further damaging Florida's economy.
By the time the Great Depression began in the rest of the nation in 1929, Floridians had already become accustomed to economic hardship.
In 1929 the Mediterranean fruit fly invaded the state, and the citrus industry suffered. A quarantine was established, and troops set up roadblocks and checkpoints to search vehicles for any contraband citrus fruit. Florida's citrus production was cut by about sixty percent.
State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/141677
1945 Post War Florida
In 1944 the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed a system of all-white primary elections that had limited the right of African Americans to vote.
Since World War II, Florida's economy also has become more diverse. Tourism, cattle, citrus, and phosphate have been joined by a host of new industries that have greatly expanded the numbers of jobs available to residents. Florida is now the fourth most populous state in the nation.
U.S. Navy dive bombers flying over Miami during WWII
State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/25729
Workers constructing architect Ralph Twitchell's cantilever roof house on Siesta Key near Sarasota, Florida.
The Cocoon House was later selected in 1953 by the New York Museum of Modern Art as one of the 19 examples of houses built since World War II as a pioneer design foreshadowing the future. The structure has been the subject of considerable study, appearing in most of the major architectural periodicals of the time.
1960 Contemporary Florida
The State's more recently developed industries include electronics, plastics, construction, real estate, and international banking.
