This voucher is your ticket into Florida's Spanish past!
You will have a tour guide who will guide you through the Spanish Military Hospital Museum, Castillo de San Marcos Fort, Fountain of Youth Archeological Park, and Old Florida Museum.
You will start your journey into Florida's Spanish History at the Spanish Military Hospital Museum on 3 Aviles Street in St Augustine, FL. You will meet-up with you tour guide who will take your EEP! INC voucher and stay with you throughout the event.
From The Spanish Military Hospital Museum:
"Travel back in time to the Spanish Military Hospital Museum where the doctor is always in. Our 45 minute educational tour provides a memorable and entertaining living history experience. Students will thrill as their adventure into the past begins as our skilled surgeons perform virtual surgery on a lucky volunteer. Watch as our Apothecary creates medicines and discover how colonial herbs were the origins of some of the most popular medicines today! Uncover how Spanish physicians wove together knowledge from Europe and Africa to achieve an astonishing survival rate.
Students will remember their visit and the lessons learned here.
1. The importance of education, cleanliness and good health practices
2. Modern use for colonial medicines
3. Florida’s Colonial periods."
Then, you will move on to a guided tour of Castillo de San Marcos Fort. According to visitstaugustine.com "The oldest masonry fort in the continental United States, the Castillo de San Marcos is a large Spanish stone fortress built to protect and defend Spain's claims in the New World. It's a National Monument and, at over 315 years old, it's the oldest structure in St. Augustine."
Then, your tour guides will guide you through the Fountain of Youth Archeological Park. Here you will tour the North America's First National Historical Site, visit the planetarium, learn of Spanish exploration of the New World, and see the landmark cross that was laid to mark Spain's claim to all of North America.
Finally, you will travel to the Old Florida Museum and find out what life was like in Spanish Colonial America in Fort Mose, the nation's first free African American settlement!
"The Spanish settled St. Augustine on September 8, 1565. It was a military outpost that included three standing fortifications by the 1740’s. They were the Castillo de San Marcos on the east, Fort Matanzas to the south, and Fort Mose to the north. Word of freedom spread to the African-American slaves in the English colony of Carolina. The Spanish had decreed that freedom would be granted to any slave that reached the Spanish colony if they would convert to the Catholic religion. In 1738, Governor Manuel de Montiano established the new town Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, also known as Fort Mose, the first free black settlement in the Americas. These new soldiers posed a fierce line of defense as they would fight to the death to protect their freedom. Students sample a soldiers life in Spanish Florida, and learn how hard it was to start a new colony."
