In one of the great real estate deals of all time, the United States acquired all of Florida from Spain 206 years ago for less than the price of a Naples beachfront home.
Spain’s asking price was $5 million. The sale closed on Feb. 22, 1819, a cash deal, sold as-is.
It is unknown who among the more than 200,000 real estate agents in Florida got the commission for that sale. Oh, wait, they weren’t here yet. But they would flock down soon enough once word got out about the great bargains to be had on swampland.
What many people may not realize is that Florida, not Plymouth Rock, was the first part of the United States to be settled by Europeans. Those early pioneers were enjoying our beaches and hurricanes long before the Mayflower landed.
However, they weren’t the first actual human beings to arrive. Paleo-Indians began trekking to this peninsula 14,000 years ago. They were here long before the Egyptian pyramids were built, thousands of years earlier than the birth of Christ, and certainly before Juan Ponce de Leon showed up in 1513 in search of the Fountain of Youth.
It was Ponce who gave the state its name. He arrived during the Easter holiday and named it after the season’s Festival of Flowers, Pascua Florida.
The indigenous people of Florida, the Calusas, weren’t consulted. Annoyed, they rewarded Ponce de Leon by fatally shooting him with a poisoned arrow.
By the early 19th century, Americans — the first snowbirds — were migrating here, so the Spaniards figured it was time to sell while demand was high. And it wasn’t long thereafter before the landscape became littered with roadside motels and tourist traps selling seashells, shark teeth, and baby gator heads.
One of those early tourists, historians imagine, spotted a pond full of alligators, and decided to swim across.
“Hold my beer,” he told his friend.
Thus, was born the legend of Florida Man.*
And it all began two centuries ago.
*Florida Man is an Internet meme first popularized in 2013, referring to an alleged prevalence of people performing irrational, ridiculous, and maniacal actions in the U.S. state of Florida.
