Unearthing Florida: 1733 Spanish Plate Fleet

Shipping riches of gold, silver, and exotic resources from the New World across the Atlantic was often dangerous for Spanish sailing fleets centuries ago: especially during hurricane season.

In July of 1733 the New Spain fleet, made up of four armed ...

Unearthing Florida: Chattahoochee Landing Mounds

For Native Americans, rivers were highways, and along the Apalachicola River, one site that served as a major hub of activity was the Chattahoochee Landing.

The Chattahoochee Landing site sits strategically at the junction of two major rivers that form ...

Unearthing Florida: Negro Fort

During the War of 1812, the British built a military base in Florida on the eastern bank of the Apalachicola River that became a sanctuary for runaway slaves. The U.S. government called it “Negro Fort.”

After losing the war, the British ...

Unearthing Florida: Apalachicola River

Flowing over 100 miles from the northern state line to the Gulf of Mexico meanders one of the most important waterways in Florida’s history: the Apalachicola River.

The Apalachicola River basin within Florida covers more area than the state of Connecticut ...

Unearthing Florida: Santa Maria de Galve

For the people who lived at Pensacola’s first permanent Spanish colonial settlement, isolated on the frontier, religion provided them with the means to cope with harsh conditions.

Like Santa Maria de Galve, each settlement had churches and cemeteries, and priests, who ...

Unearthing Florida: Nuestra de Soledad

Human burials under the floor of a catholic church in St. Augustine highlight the dramatic cultural shifts that occurred there centuries ago.

I’m Dr. Judy Bense, and this is Unearthing Florida…

Originally built by the Spanish sometime shortly after 1572, the chapel ...

Unearthing Florida: Nombre de Dios

In 2011 archaeologists from the Florida Museum of Natural History uncovered an extraordinary find- the possible ruins of the oldest stone church in the state.

Originally built in 1677, the church at the Spanish mission of Nombre de Dios in St. ...

Unearthing Florida: Bureau of Archaeological Research

Have you ever wondered what happens to all the artifacts that archaeologists unearth in Florida?

The State of Florida’s Bureau of Archaeological Research, or BAR, in Tallahassee has a wonderful conservation lab and collections facility. This is where the artifacts found ...

Unearthing Florida: Newnan's Lake Canoes

When lakes dry up, amazing things are sometimes brought to light; such was the case at Newnan’s Lake, where ancient canoes were exposed.

2000 was a very dry year, and as Florida’s lakes and sinkholes shrank, sunken water craft were revealed. ...

Unearthing Florida: S.S. Tarpon

The SS Tarpon was one of the unfortunate steamships in Florida’s maritime history.

For over three decades SS Tarpon, built in the late Nineteenth Century, never missed its weekly trips hauling cargo and passengers along the gulf coast, but on August ...