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Published: January 16th 2012
Fountain of Youth
Welcome to St. Augustine's most famous piece of tourist kitsch!The Oldest House
Today was my last day in Florida.
I spent it soaking up Florida history before the long drive to Charleston.
My first site was
The Oldest House.
It really is the oldest standing house in St. Augustine, but that isn’t the reason it has the name.
It was one of St. Augustine’s first tourist attractions.
The house was originally built in the 1750s, and it had two rooms.
When the English took over, they added more rooms, but it was still one story.
When the Americans took it over, they added a second story.
In the Victorian era, owner Charles Carver added a round turret and a garage, and covered the interior with wood paneling.
The house was one of the strangest looking buildings in town, and the Carvers started showing it to tourists.
They called it The Oldest House as a way of drumming up business.
The fact that later archeology proved their claim correct is almost a complete coincidence!
At this point, the house has been restored to its appearance in the 1830s.
The Victorian elements were not well
St. Augustine Oldest House
The oldest house in St. Augustine, one of the city's oldest tourist attractions built and had to be torn down.
Different rooms have appearances to match the different eras.
The guides go through the various furnishings, and explain what they were for.
The Spanish rooms are first.
They are incredibly spare, except for the cross on the wall.
Water came from a local well, and was filtered though porous shellstone rock.
English comes next.
They added a separate kitchen and a fireplace (unusually, the later Spanish owner kept this feature).
The home was used as a tavern for a while to supplement the owner’s income.
American comes last upstairs.
In one room, the Victorian wood paneling has been preserved.
It really clashes with the rest of the house at this point.
Fountain of Youth
My next site was an attraction called the
Fountain of Youth.
On one level it is a kitschy tourist trap, but on another level it’s a serious historic attraction.
Florida was discovered and named by the Spanish adventurer Ponce de Leon.
During his journey he was searching (
in legend, at least) for a mythic fountain whose waters would guarantee eternal life.
This spot outside
The Foutain Of Youth
The centerpiece of the Fountain of Youth, the spring building. The actual spring is behind the fence in the center of the photo. St. Augustine is where he landed.
There is a spring here, and it became the centerpiece of the attraction.
The shtick (and it is definitely shtick) is that this spring is the Fountain Ponce de Leon was looking for.
The spring itself is housed in a stone building containing dioramas of the Indians who occupied the site, and the Spanish fleet.
One can still drink the water from a supplied paper cup.
It tastes heavily of sulfur.
If one likes it, there is plenty more for sale in the gift shop.
The next item of note, and the most serious from a historic point of view, is the Indian Village exhibit.
This area was the site of an Indian village when Ponce de Leon landed.
The exhibit describes the village and its society, and how the coming of the Spanish changed it (they forced everyone to convert to Christianity, for starters).
It has some impressive artifacts.
Globe of Discovery
Another building contains an item equal to the Weeki Wachee mermaids (see March 26
th) on the classic tourist kitsch scale, the
Globe of Discovery.
Globe of Discovery at the Fountain of Youth
A single moment of the Globe of Discovery show, which shows Spanish exploration of the Americas. This particular scene shows Columbus's first voyage. It holds a three story black-light globe that actually rotates.
It’s the centerpiece of a show illustrating Spanish exploration of the New World, which starts with the theme to
2001 and finishes with God Bless America.
Don’t miss it 😊
The rest of the site is pure tourist nectar.
There is a flock of peacocks, for one thing.
They have no relation to the history whatsoever, but are there because the owners like them.
Same with the duck pond, which had several ducklings when I visited.
The grounds contain rust and barnacle covered anchors and cannon.
These were bought from salvaged ships in Florida and are mostly authentic to the period.
Finally, there is the obligatory fiberglass statue of Ponce de Leon at the entrance, perfectly positioned for photographs with the family.
It should come as no surprise that this place is a tour bus magnet.
One negative that must be pointed out is that the route here passes a fundamentalist Christian church.
This church has filled their yard with wooden crosses, one for every abortion performed in Florida last year.
Just
Street outside Fountain of Youth
The spectacular tunnel of oak trees on the way to the Fountain of Youth what the visiting tourist needs to see, right?
The street outside the Fountain of Youth is an attraction in its own right.
It’s lined with ancient oak trees that curve over the road to form a tunnel.
The trees are absolutely covered in Spanish moss.
There is so much, it even hangs from the electrical wires.
I found this street even more impressive than the tree lined streets of Savannah because the trees are higher above the road (Savannah still wins for sheer numbers, though).
Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Reserve
My final site for the day was another very special Florida beach.
Beachfront property in Florida is so valuable that nearly all of it has been developed in one form or another.
One of the exceptions is the
Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Reserve.
Primarily managed as a sanctuary for marine life, it includes a section of a barrier island north of St. Augustine.
The Atlantic side of the island is a long straight beach that appears to run forever (it’s really five miles long) with no development whatsoever.
Behind the beach is a series of grass
Matanzas Refuge Beach
The beach at Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Reserve, the only undeveloped beach in northern Florida. covered dunes, dense trees sculpted by the wind, and then marshes.
It’s gloriously isolated to begin with, and today cruddy weather meant I was the only one there.
The water was too cold to swim, but watching the waves crash on shore was peaceful enough.
Of course, five miles later I was right back in the world of exclusive gated resorts, expensive housing, and traffic.
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