Fort Caroline was the first French colony in the present-day United States. Established in what is now Jacksonville, Florida, on June 22, 1564, under the leadership of René Goulaine de Laudonnière, it was intended as a refuge for the Huguenots. It lasted one year before being obliterated in 1565 by Spanish settlers, who built their own fort at the site, later abandoned in 1569. The site is now operated as Fort Caroline National Memorial, a unit of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve. For related events, see: Timeline of the colonization of North America.
Famous quotes containing the words fort and/or caroline:
“How often we read that the enemy occupied a position which commanded the old, and so the fort was evacuated! Have not the school-house and the printing-press occupied a position which commands such a fort as this?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I have eyes to see now what I have never seen before.”
—Anonymous, U.S. correspondence student. As quoted in The Life of Ellen H. Richards, ch. 9, by Caroline L. Hunt, quoting Ellen Swallow Richards (1912)