Spanish Pond

In 1565, 500 Spanish soldiers from St. Augustine marched for four days through marsh, forest tangle, fierce wind, and heavy rainfall to an encampment near here. Exhausted and hungry, they rested in a downpour, and at dawn they attacked and captured France's Fort de la Caroline. As they slogged through wetlands like Spanish Pond to overtake the fort, they saw an inhospitable environment. An open, pristine pine flatwoods once surrounded this spot; today, a fragmented forest with thick underbrush exists, but nature is still alive at Spanish Pond with spring peepers, cricket frogs, bullfrogs, small alligators, mud turtles, wood ducks, great egrets, and woodstorks inhabiting the pond and its surrounding habitats.

Jacksonville, Florida · United States