Four Flags Over the Plaza

Stand in the Plaza de la Constitucion and you stand at the heart of a town that has changed hands more often than almost any place in America. Its old Government House has flown, by tradition, several different flags. For nearly two centuries Saint Augustine was Spanish, founded in fifteen sixty-five.

Then, in seventeen sixty-three, the Treaty of Paris ended the Seven Years War, and Spain traded all of Florida to Britain to win back the port of Havana. Almost the entire Spanish population sailed for Cuba, and the British took over a nearly empty town. They renamed the main street for King George and made Saint Augustine the capital of East Florida.

During the American Revolution, East Florida stayed loyal to the crown and became a refuge for Loyalists fleeing the rebels. But when Britain lost the war, the treaty of seventeen eighty-three handed Florida back to Spain. This second Spanish period lasted until the Adams Onis Treaty, signed in eighteen nineteen, gave Florida to the United States.

In eighteen twenty-one, the Spanish flag came down in Saint Augustine for the last time. Spanish, British, Spanish again, then American, with a brief Confederate flag during the Civil War. Few American towns have lived under so many rulers while never once ceasing to be a town.