Juan Ponce de León

Juan Ponce de León had already served as governor of Puerto Rico when he outfitted three ships in 1513 and sailed north in search of land the Spanish crown had authorized him to claim and settle, not — contrary to the legend attached to him later — in pursuit of a fountain that restored youth. His party made landfall near present-day St. Augustine in April 1513, becoming the first documented Europeans to set foot on what is now the continental United States, and he named the peninsula La Florida for the Easter season, Pascua Florida, during which he arrived.

Ponce de León charted much of Florida's Atlantic and Gulf coastline on that voyage and a second one in 1521, encountering resistance from the Calusa and other Native nations who had lived along that coast for centuries and who had no reason to welcome an armed Spanish landing party. The fountain-of-youth story attached to him grew up decades after his death, most likely invented or exaggerated by a Spanish court historian looking to add color to an otherwise straightforward account of territorial claim-staking.

On his 1521 return voyage, a Calusa attack near the Florida coast left Ponce de León wounded by an arrow; he died of the injury soon after reaching Cuba, where he is buried. Florida itself did not see successful permanent Spanish settlement until Pedro Menéndez de Avilés founded St. Augustine more than 40 years later, in 1565.