A wide diversity of people traversed this spot on the St. Johns River, beginning with ancient tribes and the Timucuan and Mayacan Indians. The St. Johns River was named one of fourteen American Heritage Rivers because of its importance to the life, culture, and history of the area. In 1562, a French Huguenot colony was established at the present site of Astor, and the Spanish wiped out the colony in 1566. While exploring the St. Johns River in early 1596, Don Pedro Menendez described the west bank between a very big lake and a smaller one farther upstream as a likable spot shaded by formidable trees, with abundant fish and forests inhabited by many birds and beasts. In 1765, botanist William Bartram explored the Astor area, called it an Eden in his book Travels, and wrote more than 70 pages about the area; he was said to have worked under the Bartram Oak in Astor near the trail named for him. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings won the Pulitzer Prize for The Yearling, based on her time in the Ocala National Forest among local families, and in the novel, set in the late 1870s, Astor and Volusia were among the locations, with the Baxter family crossing by ferry to Volusia to buy goods at the general store. The Astor family of New York bought 12,000 acres in 1874 to develop the area, and William Backhouse Astor, Jr. first called the town Manhattan while tourists reached his hotel on the St. Johns River by steamboat. Astor Park grew along Lake Schermerhorn, named for his wife Caroline Schermerhorn Astor. After William died, the town was renamed Astor, and his son John Jacob Astor IV inherited the estate and continued promoting the area until his death in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912; afterward, his descendants sold off family interests as the steamboat industry declined. Astor is now a thriving town along the Florida Black Bear Scenic Byway, with the St. Johns River at the heart of community life and of its boating, fishing, and nature-based livelihood.