This park in St Pete FL marks one of the places where Spanish conquistador Panfilo de Narvaez landed in 1528. It is small—just a few acres—and most people come here just for the boat ramp and fishing pier, but there’s a lot of history here too.
When Panfilo de Narvaez arrived in Florida in 1528, he was looking for the same thing every Spanish conquistador was looking for: land and gold. Narvaez had previously played a part in the Spanish conquest of Cuba, where he had been given a large tract of land by the Governor. He also received a reputation for being arrogant, incompetent, and cruel. When he was sent by the Governor of Cuba to Mexico to order Hernan Cortes to return, it provoked a pitched battle in which Narvaez was wounded and spent two years recovering in Spain.
In December 1526, King Charles V of Spain appointed Narvaez as Governor of Florida—a mostly-unknown land that had been found by Ponce de Leon in 1513. With a large fleet and an army of Spanish soldiers, Narvaez left for the New World, but ran into a hurricane and had to put in at Cuba for replacements. It wasn’t until 1528 that he departed Santiago, Cuba, for Havana, intending to pick up more supplies and then cross to Florida.
On the way, however, they were blown off course by a storm and were pushed further out into the Gulf of Mexico. Lost, Narvaez decided that it would be better to push on to Florida instead of returning to Cuba, and he finally reached land on April 15, 1528, on a stretch of coast near what is now Tampa Bay. This area was inhabited by the Tocobaga natives, and the Spanish tried to bargain with them for food and water. But when Narvaez treated them with his customary arrogance and cruelty (according to later written accounts, he cut off the Tocobaga chieftain’s nose and fed an Indian women to the Spanish dogs), the Tocobaga took up their weapons and drove the Spaniards out of their land.
Now disorganized, the Spanish split into two groups. Hearing stories from the natives about a large bay to the north (at which lived a group of Natives that were rich with gold) which they called Appalachee, Narvaez ordered his ships to take the women and some soldiers and set sail to anchor there. He himself would take around 400 men and travel overland in order to explore his new territory, and would, he said, meet the ships there.
Narvaez and his men traveled north along the Gulf Coast of Florida. They met resistance from one Native American settlement after another. By the time they reached the area of present-day Tallahassee, only half of his men remained, and after an attack by the powerful Appalachee settlement there, Narvaez finally decided to abandon Florida.
His remaining men set out in crude log rafts, hoping to cross the Gulf and reach Spanish territory in Mexico (they did not know how wide the Gulf of Mexico was). After a time, the rafts reached the mouth of the Mississippi River, and were swept out to sea by the current. Here, they further split into two groups. One, led by Narvaez, departed to try to travel north back to the coast. They were never seen again. The other group, led by Alvar Cabeza de Vaca, drifted west all the way to present-day Galveston TX where they were hit by a hurricane and most of them drowned.
The survivors washed up on the island and were captured by local Natives. After a time, four of them, including Cabeza, managed to escape, then walked all the way through what is now Texas, New Mexico and Arizona to the Spanish settlements on the Pacific coast of Mexico. It had been eight years since they had left Cuba.
Cabeza’s written record of his long trip remains one of the most important sources of information on the Narvaez Expedition and the early Native peoples of North America.
Although the exact route taken by the Narvaez and Cabeza groups is often disputed (the Spaniards did not have any navigational instruments with them and could not determine their positions), it has been generally accepted that Narvaez’s initial landing in Florida was in present-day St Petersburg, at Boca Ciega near the mouth of Tampa Bay. Excavations here have found 16th century Spanish artifacts.
Today, the Jungle Prada de Narvaez Park commemorates the location, and the spot has been listed on the National Register of Historical Places. The site contains historical markers and the remains of Tocobaga shell midden mounds, much of which are located on adjacent private property.
Some photos from a visit to the park.