ST. AUGUSTINE — For years, tourists lured to St. Augustine`s ``Fountain of Youth`` tourist park by the suggestion ``Ponce de Leon was here`` have strolled across the grassy, sunbaked clearing, searching for a legend.
They could not have known that 420 years of real history lay a few inches beneath their feet.
There is no scientific or historical evidence that either Ponce de Leon or his fabled fountain were ever here.
But Pedro Menendez de Aviles was.
It was Menendez, newly commissioned ``captain general of the ocean sea`` and governor of Spanish holdings in ``La Florida,`` who brought nearly 900 people to the banks of the Matanzas River in 1565 to found the settlement he called San Augustin.
As the country`s ``oldest city,`` St. Augustine has always cherished its historical status. Until this year, however, the exact location of that historic first settlement has been a mystery.
Now, Florida archaeologists have found what may be the very spot that marks the beginnings of the first permanent European settlement in the United States -- the start of a political and cultural presence that has influenced the country ever since.
The discovery, however, was almost an accident.
For years, Dr. Kathleen Deagan, chairman of the University of Florida`s anthropology department and associate curator of the Florida State Museum, has been digging into the past of the country`s oldest city, down through the pavement of modern sidewalks, and back -- one layer of history at a time -- through distinct periods of American, British, and Spanish occupation.
Deagan`s research during the last 14 years has enabled St. Augustine to understand its past. This year, however, Deagan decided it was time to start learning something about the original inhabitants of the area, the Timucuan Indians.
The site she chose for the excavation, currently occupied by the ``Fountain of Youth`` tourist attraction, was reputed to have been the location of a large Indian village, not far from the spot where the Spanish erected the city`s first crude fortress.