The history of Pensacola, Florida, begins long before the Spanish claimed founding of the modern city in 1698. The area around present-day Pensacola was inhabited by Native American peoples thousands of years before the historical era.
The historical era begins with the arrival of Spanish explorers in the 16th century. In 1559 Tristan de Luna established a short-lived settlement at Pensacola Bay; it was the first multi-year European settlement in what is now the continental United States but was abandoned after two years.John E. Worth, The Tristán de Luna Expedition, 1559-1561, http://uwf.edu/jworth/spanfla_luna.htm "Floripedia: Pensacola, Florida" (history from "The Founding of Pensacola" 1904), University of South Florida, 2005, webpage: USF-Pensac2. In the late 17th century the Spanish returned to the area to found the modern Pensacola as an outpost from which to defend their claims to Spanish Florida. The city's strategic but isolated position, combined with continued European rivalries played out in North America, led to it changing hands among different Western powers a number of times. At different times it was held by the Spanish, the French, the British, the United States, and the Confederate States of America."Santa Rosa Island - a History (Part 1)" (regional history), Jane Johnson, NavarreBeach.org webpage: NBhist"The Tristan de Luna Expedition" (history), Steve Pinson, Pensacola Archeology Lab, DeLuna-PAL.
Etymology This area was first documented as "Panzacola" in 1686, when a maritime expedition, headed by Juan Enríquez Barroto and Antonio Romero, visited Pensacola Bay in February 1686. Barroto and Romero had orders to survey the entire northern Gulf coast from San Marcos de Apalache (near Tallahassee) westward, looking for the new French "lost colony" of Fort St. Louis, which René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle had established at Matagorda Bay in 1685. Other historians have hypothesized that the name is a slight deviation from "Pensicola."
Prehistory The area was largely devoid of indigenous Native American inhabitants. Given the area's advantages, it was frequently a destination for hunting and fishing by Creek people from present-day southern Alabama and Georgia.
The best-known Pensacola Culture site in terms of archeology is the Bottle Creek site, a large site located on a low swampy island north of Mobile, Alabama. This site has at least 18 large earthwork mounds; five of which are arranged around a central plaza, in a pattern typical of many moundbuilding cultures. Its main occupation was from 1250 to 1550 CE. It was a ceremonial center for the Pensacola people, and a gateway to their society. This site would have had easy access by a dugout canoe, the main mode of transportation used by the people; they traveled primarily by the waterways rather than through the thick vegetation.Archaeology of Native North America, 2010, Dean R. Snow, Prentice-Hall, New York. pp. 248–249
The Fort Walton Mound archaeological site is located about 40 miles east of downtown Pensacola. The mound was built about 850 CE by a regional variation of the Mississippian culture.
The area's recorded history begins in the 16th century, when the first European explorers came there. Early exploration of Pensacola Bay (called Polonza or Ochuse by the Spanish) spanned decades, with members of expeditions under Pánfilo de Narváez (1528), and Hernando de Soto (1539) visiting the area.
First Spanish period (1559–1719)
European exploration of the area began in the 16th century. In 1516 Diego Miruelo may have been the first European to sail into Pensacola Bay."The Spanish Presence in Northwest Florida--1513 to 1705" (history), University of West Florida, 2006, webpage: UWF-hist . Members of the expeditions of Pánfilo de Narváez in 1528 and Hernando de Soto in 1539 visited the bay, during the latter of which Francisco Maldonado recorded its name as the Bay of Ochuse, related to the Indian province.
The first Spanish settlement expedition in the region was large but short-lived, entering the bay on August 15, 1559, and led by Don Tristán de Luna y Arellano. It consisted of some 1,500 people on 11 ships from Vera Cruz, Mexico. This was the first multi-year European settlement in the territory of what is now the United States. But, weeks later, the colony was decimated by a hurricane on September 19, 1559, which killed an unknown number of sailors, sank six ships, grounded a seventh, and ruined supplies. The survivors struggled to survive, most moving inland to central Alabama for several months in 1560 before returning to the coast, but after two years, the effort was abandoned in 1561. Some of the survivors eventually sailed to Santa Elena (today's Parris Island, South Carolina), but another storm hit there. Survivors made their way to Cuba and finally returned to Pensacola, where the remaining 50 at Pensacola were taken back to Veracruz. The Viceroy's advisers later concluded that northwest Florida was too dangerous to settle. They largely ignored it for 137 years.
In 1693, Mexican Viceroy Gaspar de Sandoval Silva y Mendoza, the Conde de Galve (1688–1696), sent General Andrés de Pez to explore the north Gulf coast from Pensacola Bay to the mouth of the Mississippi River. Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, a renowned Mexican scientist, mathematician and historian, accompanied Pez. The Pez-Sigüenza expedition consisted of two ships, leaving Veracruz in late March 1693 and reaching Pensacola in early April. The Spanish re-christened Pensacola Bay as Bahía Santa María de Galve (after the Virgin Mary and the Conde de Galve, then Viceroy of Mexico). After their return to Mexico, Sigüenza wrote a glowing report and enthusiastically endorsed the notion of a settlement on the bay in his letter to the viceroy.
One of the expedition's goals was to determine how flora and fauna in the Pensacola region could benefit the Spanish. Charged with such a task, Siguenza, prone to exaggeration, described a veritable paradise, teeming with food resources and ample economic opportunities. The Mexican savant also wrote detailed descriptions of waterways in the area and described abundant trees on Blackwater River and East River as "lofty and stout, suitable for building ships of any draft". He minimized problems with the site. The Spanish Crown endorsed the settlement of Pensacola Bay on June 13, 1694. A year later, in 1695, Andrés de Arriola inspected both the mouth of the Mississippi River and Pensacola Bay but did not find the bay to be the paradise Sigüenza had described. Preoccupied with King William's War (1689–1697), the Spanish delayed settlement of Pensacola until 1698.
Previously, Tristan de Luna had named the bay as Bahía Santa María de Filipina when he founded the area's first settlement. In 1757 Panzacola was affirmed as the area's name by a royal order of Spanish King Ferdinand VI.
The Spanish resettled Pensacola in November 1698 under the direction of the first governor, Andrés de Arriola. They built three presidios in Pensacola during the following decades, in 1719, 1722 and 1754."Presidio Isla de Santa Rosa" (history & excavations), University of West Florida, Pensacola, FL, 2003, webpage: UWF-SantaRosa .
Presidio Santa Maria de Galve (1698–1719): this included fort San Carlos de Austria (east of present Fort Barrancas) and a village with church; in 1719, the area was captured by the French. A fire broke out in 1722 after a hurricane, and the French burned down the settlement before releasing it to the Spanish. It was abandoned. Presidio Isla de Santa Rosa (1722–1752): this was on the western end of Santa Rosa Island near the site of present Fort Pickens. After hurricanes battered the island in 1741 and 1752, the settlers relocated to the mainland. Another hurricane in 1762 destroyed the remnants on the island. Presidio San Miguel de Panzacola (1754-1763): following this disastrous hurricane, the Spanish built a third and final settlement, Presidio San Miguel de Panzacola, about five miles east of the first presidio in the present-day historic district of downtown Pensacola.
The present city of Pensacola was established by the Spanish in 1698 as a buffer against French settlement in Louisiana. San Marcos de Apalache, another important Spanish settlement, was established in 1733 in Wakulla County. The Spanish settlers established a Creole culture at the frontier garrison, where Europeans were mostly males. They brought the Roman Catholic Church and tried to convert the Pensacola, as well as African slaves whom they imported as laborers. Marriages and unions took place among all three peoples, resulting in numerous mixed-race descendants, whom the Spanish classified in ranges. They described children of Pensacola-Spanish unions as mestizo and children of African-Spanish unions as mulattos. Pensacola Indian identity was recorded by the church authorities, a practice that continued until about 1840. The early years of settlement were extremely tenuous; the soil was poor for cultivation of agricultural crops known to the Spanish, and the settlement was irregularly resupplied. It was considered an unpopular military posting due to tropical disease, heat, and the poor conditions.
French explorers founded Mobile in 1699, located 59 miles overland to the west, and also on the Gulf of Mexico. This settlement represented competition and a threat to the Spanish, who had opposed the French in the Nine Years' War. The Spanish colonial authorities also discovered that Carolinian traders were entering the colony to trade with the Creek people, establishing informal anti-Spanish alliances. During Queen Anne's War, Creek war parties, aided by Carolinian raiders, launched several raids in the Pensacola region, and besieged the city twice in 1707. These raiding parties also raided settlements belonging to the Pensacola people, who responded by retreating into the cities of Pensacola, Mobile, and St.Augustine.
French period (1719–1722)
Governor of French Louisiana, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, took Pensacola for France on May 14, 1719, arriving with his fleet and a large ground force of allied Indian warriors. The Spanish commander of Pensacola, Metamoras, had not heard that war had been declared between France and Spain, and his garrison was so small that he believed it would be useless to resist. At four o'clock in the afternoon, he surrendered on the conditions that private citizens and property should not be disturbed, and the garrison should be allowed to march out with honors of war and be transported to Havana, Cuba in French vessels. Bienville left a garrison of about sixty men at Pensacola and sailed away.
The French, with small settlements further west at Mobile and Biloxi, held Pensacola during this period. Overall, French influences were generally dominant among the Creoles on the Gulf Coast west of Pensacola, with Spanish influences dominant among Creoles in the modern Panhandle. A hurricane drove the French from Pensacola in 1722 and they burned the town before leaving. The Spanish moved the town from the storm-vulnerable barrier island to the mainland.
Second Spanish period (1722–1763) The area was rebuilt, but it was ravaged by hurricanes in 1752 and 1761. Population growth remained modest during this period, which was characterized by Spanish missionary work with Indians and the development of Pensacola as an important port and military outpost. Conflict with French and British interests was common. Spain's informal alliance with France meant that the greatest threat to colonial Florida was from British privateers, smugglers and traders. Their ability to sell goods to the Indians and Spanish colonists more cheaply than companies from Spain did diminished local support for the Bourbon monarchy in Madrid.
British West Florida (1763–1781)