America turned 250 this year. That's worth celebrating.
It's also a good moment to look at Florida's part in the story. When the Founders were signing the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, Florida was a British colony, and would remain so until 1783. It didn't join the United States until 1821. Which means Florida had long before there was a country to celebrate.
Here are three of the oldest, three of the newest, and one small idea worth carrying out of all of it.
The oldest three:
Founded by Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés a full 55 years before the Mayflower reached Plymouth Rock. The city's famous fort, the Castillo de San Marcos, was built in 1672 out of coquina, a soft, porous stone made from compressed shells. When the British laid siege in 1702 and again in 1740, their cannonballs did not shatter the walls. They sank into them. One English observer said the rock gave way "as though you would stick a knife into cheese." Scientists at the University of Florida finally figured out why in 2015: the shells inside the stone act like foam, absorbing impact instead of cracking. The Castillo still stands. The cannonballs are still in the walls.
Known as the "City of Five Flags" because Spain, France, Britain, the Confederacy, and the United States have each claimed it at different points. That's not a slogan someone made up for a tourism campaign. It's just the actual sequence of who was in charge.
A Navy town at the end of the road, but that's not what made it famous. In the mid-1800s, so many ships wrecked on the reefs surrounding the island that a whole legal industry sprang up around salvage. Locals called "wreckers" raced out in fast schooners to rescue crews and haul cargo back to shore, where it was sold at auction. It was so lucrative that by the middle of the 19th century, Key West was the wealthiest city per capita in the entire United States, even richer than New York City.
The newest three.
In the late nineteenth century, a religious commune led by a self-proclaimed messiah named Cyrus Teed arrived in Estero from Chicago. They called themselves the Koreshan Unity, and they believed the Earth was hollow, that we all lived on the inside of a concave sphere with the sun at its center. They also, somehow, incorporated the Town of Estero in 1904, a 110-square-mile municipality that stretched from Fort Myers to Bonita Springs. The Florida legislature abolished it in 1907. It took the community another 107 years to try again. On December 31, 2014, the modern Village of Estero was incorporated after 86% of residents voted yes.
Built from scratch in Palm Beach County on land that used to be farmland and citrus groves. The whole city is still writing its first chapter.
Named for the Seminole community that made the area home, Indiantown incorporated on December 31, 2017. It's the most recent municipality in Florida, and its story is just beginning.
How cities happen.
Six cities. Six different reasons any of them ever became a city at all.
What ties them all together is what happens at the beginning. In every case, a group of people looked at where they lived and decided it should have its own name, its own map, and its own voice.
There's a good chance the city or town you live in has a story like this too. Look up when it was incorporated. You might be surprised.
Happy 250th, America. And happy birthday to every Florida city, old and new.
