Centuries-old Spanish fort found under South Carolina golf course

[Judi Lynn]

Centuries-old Spanish fort found under South Carolina golf course

Archaeologists announced on Tuesday that they have found the Spanish fort of San Marcos on Parris Island, South Carolina, at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot

Alan Yuhas
@alanyuhas
Tuesday 26 July 2016 14.35 EDT

They arrived with cannons and guns, and quickly built a fort on the coast of this vast, uncharted territory to ward off native people and French settlers. But after 21 years, Spain’s northernmost settlement on the east coast of North America was abandoned , and stood hidden for the next four centuries.

Archaeologists announced on Tuesday that they have found the Spanish fort of San Marcos on Parris Island, South Carolina, under what is now a golf course at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot.

Using radar and ground-penetrating sensors, researchers from the University of Georgia were able to measure magnetic fields and and map the settlement that had once been called Santa Elena, the capital of Spanish Florida.

Santa Elena was founded in 1566 by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, the conquistador who earned himself the title of Florida’s governor the year before, when he founded the settlement of St Augustine. Menéndez carried the brutal politics of Europe to the Americas: that same year he ordered the massacre of more than 200 French settlers who would not renounce their Protestant sect for Catholicism.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/26/spanish-fort-found-san-marcos-south-carolina

[left-of-center2012]

1. Very interesting

"The 15-acre colony had not only houses, but also a church, courts, shops, taverns and structures that were probably farms and wells, the researchers found ..."