This estuary was once part of an 800-acre Spanish Land Grant received by Joseph Mariano Hernandez in 1816. Between here and Old King's Road stood St. Joseph's Plantation, which mainly grew sugarcane. It was one of three plantations owned by Hernandez and operated through the forced labor of over 75 enslaved people. Hernandez Landing was vital to local planters as the area’s first commercial shipping site. Flat bottom boats transported goods through the shallows of Long Creek to the Matanzas River and waiting ships, which sailed to markets in St. Augustine and Savannah. An early 1800s map shows a landing for boats and a cart road that ended at Long Creek. Archaeologists found remnants of a wooden wharf and bulkhead here in 2008. Goods transferred over this wharf included rice, sugar, indigo, and sea-island cotton. St. Joseph's Plantation was burned during the Second Seminole War (1835-1842). Hernandez became a US citizen in 1821. The next year, he was appointed to Florida’s legislative council and selected as Florida's first delegate to the United States Congress, its first Hispanic member. He also served as Brigadier General of the East Florida Militia and was Mayor of St. Augustine. He died in Cuba in June 1856.
Slide toward Today to fade the historical sheet and see the modern map underneath.