St Augustine: The Town Wall, The Public Burying Ground & Zero Milestone of Old Spanish Trail

The city was nearly 150 years old when the
Spanish military and local residents finally
decided enough was enough and began the
process of fortifying the entire town. St.
Augustine had been attacked a number of
times over the years, but an English assault
in 1702 was the "straw that broke the camel's
back."

Led by Governor James Moore, the large
English force and looted and sacked the city.
Even though he was unable to capture the
powerful Castillo de San Marcos, where
1,500 residents took shelter, Moore
devastated the old city.

Two years later in 1704, the Spanish began
construction of the Cubo line, a powerful
earthen wall backed by palmetto logs. From
the outworks of the Castillo de San Marcos,
the wall extended west across the northern
end of town to the San Sebastian River.

Along this line were the main gates to the city
and several larger fortifications called
redoubts. The redoubts added extra power to
the line and provided locations for artillery
emplacements.

During the yellow fever epidemic of 1821, this half-acre plot was set aside as a public cemetery for non-Catholics. It is also known as the Huguenot Cemetery. Many Protestant pioneers to the new Florida Territory are buried here. Often such burials, made at public expense, went unmarked. The Presbyterian Church has owned and maintained the cemetery since 1832. Interments were discontinued in 1884. The cemetery is not usually open to the public, however it is easily viewable from the street.

19th Century Mill, built in 1888

The Old Spanish Trail (the OST) was an auto trail that once spanned the United States with a full 3,000 miles (4,800 km) of roadway from ocean to ocean. It crossed eight states and 67 counties along the southern border of the United States. Work on the auto highway began in 1915 at a meeting held at the Battle House Hotel in Mobile, Alabama, and, by the 1920s, the trail linked St. Augustine, Florida, to San Diego, California, with its center and headquarters in San Antonio, Texas. The cities in between boasted a shared heritage of Spanish missions, forts and Spanish colonization.

Zero Milestone of the Spanish Trail