Shell Banks Baptist Church stands near the location identified as Achuse, an Indian village said to have been the first in America visited by a white man. Achuse was visited by Admiral Maldonado, one of De Soto’s officers, as he scouted the Florida and Alabama coast from Tampa Bay and entered its port before De Soto began from Tampa Bay on his expedition. This took place in 1539, 81 years before the Pilgrims kneeled at Plymouth Rock and 68 years before the colony landed at Jamestown. The village name appears at this location on the official map made by the U.S. De Soto Expedition Commission, created by Congress in 1936, and an old crude Spanish map of the Gulf Coast region made in the 16th century also shows Achuse near the same location.