United States Senator Mel Martinez
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Your Florida - Florida History

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12,400 B.C. Stone points of spears found in conjunction with bones of extinct large animals suggest the presence of early human travel to Florida.

5,000 B.C. First semi-permanent settlements appeared in Florida as the Indians depended in a large degree on snails, mollusks, and freshwater shellfish.

3,570 B.C. First permanent, year-round settlement in North America located at Atlantic Beach near the mouth of the St. Johns River.

EUROPEAN DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT IN FLORIDA 1498-1821 

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1498 Europeans saw Florida for the first time. John Cabot of England viewed in 1498 or 1499 a great bay which may have been Miami's Biscayne Bay.

1513 Juan Ponce de Leon arrived and named the land "Pascua Florida" because of its discovery "in the time of the Feast of Flowers."

1586 Sir Francis Drake, British seafarer, sacked and burned St. Augustine.

1605 Franciscan friars were the first Florida schoolteachers.

1715 Ten Spanish treasure ships were driven onto the reefs on the east coast of Florida.

1814 Andrew Jackson captured and abandoned Pensacola.

1816 The First Seminole War began.

1817 From 1817-1818, U.S. settlers, Spanish citizens, British agents and Creek Natives clashed in West Florida. Andrew Jackson, regardless of the international border, burned native villages, hanged two British subjects, and captured St. Marks and Pensacola.

TERRITORIAL FLORIDA 1821-1845 

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1821 Andrew Jackson received the East and West Florida from the Spanish authorities.

Hand-colored Spanish land grant maps were among the documents used to establish ownership of land in Florida.

1830 Population 34,730 (white 18,395, nonwhite 16,335).

1835 Beginning of the Second Seminole War.

Richard Keith Call became the territorial governor of Florida.

1838 Fifty-six commissioners elected from Florida's 20 counties gathered at St. Joseph to draft a constitution in anticipation of statehood.

1842 Second Seminole War ended by U.S. Government decision, without treaty or capitulation.

ANTE-BELLUM FLORIDA 1845-1861 

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1845 The Act establishing statehood for Iowa and Florida was approved on March 3, 1845 by the second session of the 28th Congress.

CIVIL WAR IN FLORIDA 1861-1865 

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1861 On January 10, the Secession Convention voted 62-7 to adopt an Ordinance of Secession and withdraw Florida from the United States.

1864 The Union army was defeated by Confederates at Olustee.

1865 Home Guards and Cadets from West Florida Seminary saved Tallahassee from capture at the Battle of Natural Bridge.

The war ended with Tallahassee the only Confederate state capital east of Mississippi to escape occupation. Slavery was ended.

POST-CIVIL WAR FLORIDA 1865-1913 

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1870 Population 187,748 (white 96,057, nonwhite 91,691).

1885 The first Confederate pensions in Florida were authorized and granted to veterans the sum of $5.00 per month.

1889 A yellow fever epidemic brought creation of the State Board of Health.

1898 The Spanish-American War saw embarkation camps at Tampa, Miami and Jacksonville, with thousands of soldiers and other who visited the state returning afterwards.

1904 Mary McLeod Bethune opened her school in Daytona Beach.

1906 Hundreds of workers on the Florida East Coast Railway's Overseas Extension were lost when a hurricane swept the Keys and battered Miami on October 18th.

1911 Lincoln Beachy at Tampa made the first night flight in history.

FLORIDA DURING WORLD WAR I, 1914-1918 

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1917 From 1917-1918, Florida was the scene of training for World War I fighting men, particularly aviators, as weather permitted year-round activity.

The World War I service cards provide the name; age; serial number; race; place of birth; and residence; for service men and women who were either from Florida or who entered service in Florida.

THE FLORIDA BOOM AND BUST, 1919-1929 

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1923 Leasing of state convicts to timber companies and other interests was abolished as a result of the death of a prisoner in a private camp.

DEPRESSION AND THE NEW DEAL YEARS IN FLORIDA, 1930-1941 

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1930 Population 1,468,211 (white 1,035,390, nonwhite 432,821).

1937 On June 1, Amelia Earhart took off from Miami on the first overwater leg of a round-the-world flight. They disappeared over the Pacific on July 2.

1938 Zora Neale Hurston began working for the Florida division of the Work Projects Administration (WPA). At the time, Hurston had already published Jonah's Gourd Vine and Mules and Men.

FLORIDA IN WORLD WAR II, 1941-1945 

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1941 On December 7, 1941 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and on December 8 the United States entered World War II.

POST-WAR FLORIDA, 1945-1960 

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1946 The war's end allowed the start of public institutional improvements and a statewide building boom.

1956 The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously decided that school segregation was unconstitutional. The process of desegregation continued into the early seventies with civil rights protests to integrate buses, stores, theaters, and beaches.

CONTEMPORARY FLORIDA, 1960- 

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1961 On May 5, the first American astronaut, Alan Shepard, was launched into space from Cape Canaveral.

1968 The Legislature submitted and voters ratified three amendments which combined to give the State an almost new constitution.

1969 On July 16, Apollo 11, with astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, and Michael Collins lifted off at Cape Kennedy on the journey to the moon. Four days later Armstrong advised the Earth: "The Eagle has landed."

Roxcy Bolton successfully challenged the practice that many restaurants had of keeping a separate "men only" section.

1969 With the office reestablished by the revised Constitution the first lieutenant governor since 1889 is appointed.

The Legislature reorganizes state government so that over 170 separate agencies become 22 operating departments.

On July 16 Apollo 11 lifts off from Cape Kennedy to carry the first men to the moon.

1971 Apollo touches down on the Moon 108 hours after blast-off from the Kennedy Space Center. Capt. Alan B. Shepard is in command.

President Richard M. Nixon orders a halt to the Cross Florida Barge Canal after $50 million has been spent on the 107-mile structure.

Walt Disney World opens October 1st. Estimated cost of the facility is between $500 and $600 million.

1972 Apollo 16 lands on the Moon for three days of exploration and returns to Earth without further incident.

1973 Despite fuel shortages in the latter part of the year, Florida sets an all-time record for influx of visitors, when 25.5 million people visit the Sunshine State.

After seven and one-half years and nearly 260,000 refugees, the "freedom flights" from Cuba come to an end on April 7th. The airlifts, bringing refugees into Miami at the rate of 48,000 a year, help transform the ethnic makeup of Dade County by adding at least 100,000 Cubans to the 150,000 already there.

1974 Reubin Askew becomes the first Governor to be elected to successive four- year terms.

1975 Governor Askew appoints Joseph W. Hatchett to the Supreme Court, the first black justice in the court's history.

1976 Former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter tops Alabama Governor George C. Wallace and 10 other Democrats in Florida's Presidential Preference Primary, giving Carter's campaign impetus which leads to his party's nomination for president. In the same primary, Florida Republicans prefer President Gerald R. Ford over former California Governor Ronald Reagan. Carter garners 51.93 percent of Florida's general election vote.

1977 Severe cold devastates citrus and vegetable plants. This causes President Carter to proclaim 34 counties disaster areas. The U.S. Corps of Engineers recommends against resumption of construction on Cross Florida Barge Canal.

1978 Miami businessman and former State Senator Bob Graham wins election as Florida's 38th governor.

1981 The first manned space shuttle launches are made from Kennedy Space Center, with launch schedules to increase in the year ahead. Unmanned rockets with payloads are scheduled approximately every month by NASA from the KSC launch pads.

1982 The Florida Legislature completes a difficult reapportionment after an extended session. The $800 million EPCOT Center opens at Walt Disney World.

1983 The space shuttle Challenger launches its first 5-member crew and the first American woman, Sally Ride, into space from Kennedy Space Center. Thirty-eight overseas highway bridges from Key Largo to Key West are completed under the Florida Keys Bridge Replacement Program.

1984 The Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay is under reconstruction. It is expected to completed in 1986 at a cost of $215 million.

1985 Florida's state park system marks its 50th anniversary. Begun during the Depression with nine parks, the system now includes 92 park and recreation areas. DeSoto Trail was officially dedicated during May in Inverness.

1986 The Kennedy Space Center witnesses America's worst space tragedy when the space shuttle "Challenger" explodes after takeoff. All seven astronauts aboard are killed.

Treasure hunter Mel Fisher continues to salvage vast amounts of gold and silver from his discovery of the Spanish galleon "Nuestra Senora de Atocha" which sank in 1622 during a hurricane off Key West.

Walt Disney World breaks ground for a major movie and television production studio to be constructed in Orlando.

1987 Bob Martinez is the first person of Spanish ancestry to become governor of Florida.

Calvin Jones, state archaeologist finds what is believed to be the site of Hernando de Soto's 1539-40 camp in Tallahassee.

U.S. Census Bureau estimates indicate that Florida has surpassed Pennsylvania to become the fourth most populous state in the nation.

1988 Florida once again becomes the center for America's space program. Regular space shuttle flights resume in October for the first time since the "Challenger” disaster in 1986.

1989 U.S. Senator Claude Pepper dies in Washington, D.C. on May 30, 1989.

Devastating cold front hits state in December, closing airports and interstates and causing statewide power outages.

1990 Panama's governor Manuel Noriega is brought to Miami in January for trial on drug charges.

Joe Robbie, Miami Dolphins founder, dies in January.

Democrat Lawton Chiles is elected governor.

1991 Lawton Chiles in January is sworn in as state's 41st governor.

The 1990 Federal Census puts Florida's population at 12,937,926, a 34 percent increase from 1980.

1992 Homestead and adjacent South Florida are devastated on August 24 by the costliest natural disaster in American history, Hurricane Andrew, demanding billions in aid. There were 58 deaths directly or indirectly related to Andrew. The hurricane destroyed 25,000 homes and damaged 10,000 others. Twenty-two thousand Federal troops were deployed. Shelters housed 80,000 persons.

First elections since Florida gained four additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives saw Cubans and Afro-Americans seated. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Cuban-born, joined lleana Ros-Lehtinen, the first Cuban, elected to the Florida House in 1982, the Florida Senate in 1986, and the U.S. House in 1989. Among Afro-Americans elected to Congress was Carrie Meek of Miami. Sixty-six in 1993, her political career saw her elected first to the Florida House of Representatives, the Florida Senate, and the U.S. House of Representatives.

1993 Janet Reno, State Attorney for Dade County (Miami) for 15 years named Attorney General of the U.S. by President Bill Clinton, the first woman to so serve in U.S. history.

1994 Lawton Chiles is reelected governor of Florida.

1995 A boat carrying 47 Cuban exiles sinks in rough seas in the Florida Straits near Key West with one fatality. The boat was part of a flotilla expedition that planned to throw bottles containing copies of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights into the waters off Cuba’s shore.

An overcrowded smuggling boat carrying more than 400 Haitian migrants lands in the Bahamas after interception by Bahamian authorities and the U.S. Coast Guard. The ship, bound for South Florida, contained neither food or water. Witnesses state that more than 600 people boarded the ship, but smugglers had thrown at least 100 overboard when the vessel began to take on water.

1998 Kenneth Hood "Buddy" MacKay, Jr. becomes Governor of Florida. Upon Governor Chiles’ sudden death, MacKay assumed the governorship for the remaining three weeks of the term.

1999 John Ellis "Jeb" Bush is elected Governor of Florida. The Republican Party controls both houses of the Legislature and the governor's office for the first time in 124 years - and for the first time in any Southern state since Reconstruction.

The "Big Sombrero," known variously as Tampa Stadium and Houlihan's, surrendered to the wrecking ball after Raymond James Stadium became the new home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

2000 The population of Florida is 15,982,378 according to the United States Census Bureau.

Governor George W. Bush was elected to the presidency of the United States.

In the Florida vote count certified on November 26th, 537 votes separated Al Gore and George W. Bush out of more than 5.8 million votes cast.

2005 Florida’s population is estimated at 17,789,864.



In the November elections, Mel Martinez is elected Florida's thirty-third Senator and is also the first Cuban born Senator in the United States Senate.