Portal:History
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Welcome to the History Portal. Here you will find links to the categories and articles that explore Pensacola's rich history.
Pensacola is known as America's First Settlement for a colony led by Tristán de Luna y Arellano in 1559, which was wiped out by a hurricane. Previous Native American inhabitants date back to the Deptford civilization of around 50 BCE. Pensacola was resettled in 1696 and at various times has been under the possession of Spain, France, Britain, the Confederacy and the United States, earning the nickname the City of Five Flags.
The Seville Square Historic District is the area where the town of Pensacola where a permanent settlement was successfully established after earlier failed attempts. The area was bounded on the south by a beautiful deep water bay, two streams east and west, and a swamp north in the area of what is now Garden Street. Seville Square was built as a parade ground for the Fort of Pensacola but became the center hub of the surrounding neighborhood. The neighborhood was saved as an historic district by the Pensacola Heritage Foundation led by Mary Turner Rule Reed. The movement to preserve and restore this and other historic areas of Pensacola began in 1963 and continues today.
The Wellge map is an aerial rendering of Pensacola created in 1885 by Henry Wellge. The extremely detailed lithograph is a bird's eye perspective of downtown Pensacola, then a bustling port city.
Elias Durnford (1739-1794) was a British military officer and civil engineer who is best known, in regard to Pensacola history, for surveying the town and laying out a city plan around two public squares (now Plaza Ferdinand VII and Seville Square). Durnford laid out the plan in 1764, shortly after the British took control of West Florida. He was also commanding British officer Fort Charlotte in Mobile when it surrendered to Gálvez on March 13, 1780.
