The Florida History Podcast

In late 1600s and early 1700s Nassau, not far from the Florida coast emerges as the center of international piracy. This presents a mortal threat to Florida

Pirate raids and English intrigue leads to the Spanish authorities building a fort to protect the colony.

English privateer/pirate Robert Searle raided St Augustine in 1668 killing 60 and taking 75 as prisoners. With the English closing in on Florida, this pirate raid was the last straw for the Spanish authorities who looked to protect the colony more robustly afterward.

A Spanish Treasure ship of 1622 destroyed in a Hurricane.

The Straits of Florida provide the ultimate chokepoint causing shipwrecks and encouraging piracy.

The most fearsome pirate for intents and purposes of his age was Sir Frances Drake. His 1586 raid on St Augustine destroyed the town and was a big moment in the Anglo-Spanish War which was based around religion.

Dominique de Gourgues leads a French attack on Spanish Florida in 1568- the start of an era of piracy against Spanish Florida.

The French settlement of La Caroline posses a threat to Spanish hegemony.

We introduce new series on piracy and treasure fleets covering the time from 1513 through about 1750.

A new season of the Florida History Podcast is on the way starting soon!

We speak this week with Eric Romo, an Architectural Historian who has produced an incredible short film on some of the key historic sites of Old Florida.

George Washington never visited Florida but he had an obsession with the military value of St Augustine for the British.

Ahead of the July 4 holiday and all the commemorations of the 250th Anniversary of the United States we remind folks that Florida stayed loyal to the crown during the Revolution and feature a few key figures in that pro-British sentiment.

Florida has a long history of Anti-Catholicism which we break down in this episode.

We discuss the history of the Voting Rights Act in Florida - what Florida was like for African-American voting rights before 1965 and all the incremental progress and eventual decline since the initial passage in 1965.

We finish up our extensive look at cancelled expressways in the state with a look at the panhandle.

We discuss cancelled expressways outside large urban areas and in fast growing sprawlish counties in the peninsula.

The University of South Florida was almost turned into an expressway-driven concrete jungle. Students and the USF community fought back. But those were just a few of the roads that planners envisioned in the Tampa Bay area that had to be fought by neighborhood activists in the 1970's, 1980's and 1990's.

We continue our look at neighborhood activism and college rebellions against concrete highways by discussing several cancelled road projects in the Orlando area during the 1980's and early 1990's.

The Sawgrass Expressway exists today but it's merely a fragment of what was originally planned. This is a story of condo commando power, FAU student activism, knocking on from the University of Miami-related activism we talked about in the previous podcast (Sawgrass Expressway was a replacement for the "University Expressway which was to run from UM to Northwest Broward and then connect t...

Ever wonder why power lines are in certain places in south Florida. Easy answer...the surface road the run along was meant to be an expressway. Why did all these super highways never get built? Community opposition and an environmental awakening. We discuss that this week on the podcast.

The 50-year struggle (ongoing) to protect the spring and horse country against expressway building in North Central Florida is discussed this week.

We discuss the sprawl created by the extension of I-75 beyond Hillsborough County. The road created major sprawl in Southwest Florida leading to the rapid development of gated and exclusive communities in the area that helped tilt Florida toward the GOP. It also created a new western suburban corporate culture in Broward County that shifted jobs away from the core city areas of Fort Lauderdale and...

We discuss I-10's avoidance of the southside of Tallahassee as an early and rare win for black political power in Florida during the 1950's, 60's and early 70's. We also talk about how the move of I-10 north has in time created more problems for Tallahassee. Additionally, we discuss the building of I-110 through Pensacola and how it decimated that black community.

We discuss the ripping apart of urban neighborhoods in Central Florida by I-4, I-275, I-175, and SR 408.