St. Augustine

I had the opportunity to travel to the Oldest City in the United States last weekend. As a History teacher, one would assume that I had a great time reading placards on monuments and visiting museums. For those of you who do not know, St. Augustine was first "discovered" by Spanish explorer Ponce De Leon. He was looking for the fabled Fountain of Youth, but all he ended up finding was a bunch of sulfur water and some Calusa Indians. While there was no Fountain of Youth, De Leon did realize that St. Augustine would be a great place to set up some gift shops and wax museums, so he claimed the land for Spain.

Now, I must admit that I had a good time in St. Augustine. There was plenty to see and do and overall it was a fun weekend. As a pseudo-historian, however, I did not come away from the weekend feeling like I had just spent the weekend in the Oldest City in the country. The town itself is beautiful, however, the people that now occupy St. Augustine seem hell-bent on exploiting the tourists who now come to visit the town. The prices that were charged for admission were outrageous for even the most mundane of attractions. While paying 5 dollars to a historical society for their upkeep of a monument is palatable, forking over 10+ dollars to see a cheap re-creation of Ponce De Leon drinking from a pool of water should be considered a crime.

The majority of the attractions in St. Augustine where basically tourist traps that exploited historic events. The best [i.e. worst] of these tourist traps was the "Fountain of Youth Experience." The center-piece of this attraction was a 20 foot illuminated plastic globe. The recorded narrator described how Ponce De Leon traveled the earth while a docent used a laser pointer to highlight his route. I stared in amazement and pondered if this was really happening. Around me there were families staring blankly with moronic grins on their faces nodding in wonderment at this massive globe. The fountain of youth experience unfortunately went downhill from there. It is a good thing that Ponce De Leon did not find the fountain of youth because he would have been utterly disappointed if he had the chance to visit the "Fountain of Youth Experience."

On the whole the weekend was not a wash because I did learn one fun fact. It turns out that the average height of a Spaniard during the 1500s was only 4'5". Ponce De Leon was a towering 4'11". The average life span was also only 40 years old for the Spanish male. Ponce had heard rumors of a tribe of Native Americans living in South Florida who were over 6' tall and who lived well into their 80s. They were the Calusa Indians and it was because of their massive height and old age that Ponce De Leon had assumed that there was a "Fountain of Youth" somewhere in Florida. Apparently the geriatrics of the country have also heard this rumor, because Florida still abounds with retirees seeking to prolong their lives and to make the roads unsafe for all of us youngsters.