I'll probably be able to figure something out between now and then, but a new website--www.staugustine-450.com--is proof that it's not too early to start thinking about our town's 450th anniversary in 2015.
The website is already starting to post some pretty cool stuff about the festivities. Here's an excerpt from their blog:
The Right Story
Two centuries before our Founding Fathers penned the Constitution, St. Augustine was already a bustling colonial town in a country that would become the United States. America’s most Ancient City, St. Augustine, has been settled continuously since explorer Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles planted his Spanish flag on the shores of the Matanzas River in 1565.
Incredibly, when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth in 1620, St. Augustine already had a fort, church, hospital, seminary, fish market and some 120 houses and shops. In a Town Plan established by the Spanish Crown in 1573, the oldest streets in America were laid down. While Jamestown settlement, founded in 1607, and Plymouth are widely attributed as the beginnings of our nation, it was instead the Spanish colonial settlement of St. Augustine and the vast territory of Spain’s La Florida that shaped colonial America. This was indeed the very foundation for the cultural and historical development of the nation…
St. Augustine is First America
To celebrate St. Augustine as First America and the integral role it played in shaping our nation throughout the last 450 years, a four-year commemoration will take place from 2012 to 2015.
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