Fort Matanzas National Monument

Since its founding in 1565, the military outpost town of St. Augustine had been the heart of Spain's coastal defenses in Florida. After the completion of the Castillo de San Marcos in 1695, the town had only one weakness: fourteen miles to the south, Matanzas Inlet allowed access to the Matanzas River, by which enemy vessels could attack the town from the rear—out of range of the Castillo's cannons. The presence of Fort Matanzas physically demonstrates the determination of the Spanish colonial authorities to improve their defensive posture in northeast Florida.

In 1565, almost 200 years before construction began on the fort, another story was played out at the Matanzas Inlet—the massacre of the French Huguenots. A large French force under Jean Ribault had left their settlement of Fort Caroline in Spanish-claimed territory near present-day Jacksonville to attack the Spanish at their new settlement of St. Augustine. A storm shipwrecked the French fleet farther south. When the Spanish discovered the French on the beach, they ordered them to surrender, give up their Protestant faith, and accept Catholicism. Because they were without weapons or food, they did surrender, but they refused to renounce their faith. So the Spanish massacred nearly 250 Frenchmen as heretics near the inlet, which was then appropriately named "Matanzas", the Spanish word for massacre. This confrontation began 235 years of Spanish control in Florida.

Completed in 1742, the fort was erected on the West Bank of the Matanzas River, immediately north of an inlet from the ocean, in order to prohibit enemy ships from proceeding northward along the river in an attack against the settlement at St. Augustine. Cannons mounted on the gun deck of the fort could easily menace any ship proceeding along the waterway.

Fort Matanzas is a well-preserved masonry watchtower fort built by the Spanish from 1740-42. The fort is 14 miles south of St. Augustine on A1A and open to the public via ferry. Built of coquina by the Spanish to protect the southern approach to St. Augustine, Fort Matanzas was proclaimed a national monument in 1924, along with its sister structure, the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine. Nine years later, both were turned over to the National Park Service.