Pensacola

Pensacola's claim to be the first European settlement in what is now the United States rests on August 1559, when Tristán de Luna y Arellano landed some 1,500 people on the bay. A hurricane sank most of his fleet within weeks and the colony was abandoned two years later; St. Augustine, founded in 1565, kept going and took the title. The Spanish returned in 1698, and for the next century the town passed between Spain, France and Britain; under British rule from 1763 it was the capital of West Florida, and Spain took it back in 1781.

Andrew Jackson seized the town twice, in 1814 and 1818, and in July 1821 he accepted Florida for the United States on the square now called Plaza Ferdinand VII. The Navy chose the bay for a navy yard in 1825, and the forts that guard the harbour — Pickens, Barrancas and McRee — were built in the decades that followed. In January 1861 Florida seceded, but Fort Pickens on Santa Rosa Island stayed in Union hands for the whole war, one of only four Southern forts to do so.

Timber and the port carried the city through the late 19th century. In 1914 the Navy made the old yard its first air station, and Pensacola has trained naval aviators ever since, earning the name Cradle of Naval Aviation; the Blue Angels made it their home in the 1950s. The beach resort on Santa Rosa Island grew in the 20th century. Hurricanes Ivan in 2004 and Sally in 2020 both struck the city hard, and the revival of downtown along Palafox Street has been the story of the years since.

The Navy sets the tone. Many residents are serving or retired military, flight training goes on overhead, and the Blue Angels' practices and air shows are civic occasions that draw the whole city to the beach and the base. The aviation museum is the city's best-known institution, and Navy Boulevard, the forts and the lighthouse are part of daily geography rather than tourist territory.

Pensacola calls itself the City of Five Flags — Spanish, French, British, Confederate and American — and the Fiesta of Five Flags each year re-enacts de Luna's landing, with float and boat parades and balls. The Spanish past is written into street names like Palafox, Zaragoza, Cervantes and Alcaniz, and the historic district keeps the colonial street plan of the 1760s with its squares. Mardi Gras is celebrated in the Gulf Coast manner shared with Mobile, with krewes, parades and beads along Palafox.

The arts have grown with downtown: the restored Saenger Theatre hosts touring shows and concerts, the city has its own symphony, opera and ballet, the museum of art occupies the old jail, and gallery nights on Palafox draw crowds. Manners are Southern — this is the part of Florida closest in speech and habit to Alabama — and church, high-school football and fishing fill weekends. The beach, the bayous and the Gulf are the city's playground, and most residents have a boat, a rod or a paddleboard.

About 54,000 people live inside the city limits and about 510,000 in the metropolitan area, which covers Escambia and Santa Rosa Counties. The Navy and the wider military are among the largest employers, with Naval Air Station Pensacola and Corry Station and Whiting Field and Eglin not far away; health care, the port, the University of West Florida, tourism and the Navy Federal Credit Union's large Pensacola campus follow.

Residents live mostly in the neighbourhoods and suburbs around the bay — East Hill and North Hill near downtown, Warrington and the west side near the base, Gulf Breeze across the bay bridge, and the fast-growing suburbs of Pace and Milton in Santa Rosa County, where many young families and military households have moved. Downtown has gained flats and restaurants since the 2010s, and the price of housing and home insurance after the recent hurricanes is the common complaint.

The rhythm is early: the base and the hospitals start before dawn, traffic builds on the bridges, and summer afternoons are broken by thunderstorms that clear in time for the evening on Palafox Street or at the beach. Hurricane season brings a yearly round of preparation, and the memory of Ivan and Sally is fresh. Beach access, the bay's water quality and the balance between the Navy, tourism and new building are the local debates.

The Gulf feeds the city. Oysters — raw, chargrilled with butter and cheese, or fried — are the first order at the fish houses on the bayfront, the bayous and the sound side of Pensacola Beach, and Gulf shrimp come steamed, fried or grilled. Grouper, red snapper, triggerfish and mahi-mahi come grilled, blackened or in sandwiches, and mullet, long the poor man's fish of the Panhandle, is smoked or fried. Joe Patti's, the large seafood market west of downtown, sells shrimp, fish and oysters and is a local institution in its own right.

Beyond seafood the cooking is Southern: fried chicken, barbecue, shrimp and grits, biscuits, boiled peanuts and sweet tea, and the Mardi Gras king cakes and gumbo that come with the Gulf Coast tradition. Palafox Street has added the restaurants of a revived downtown — Southern bistros, oyster bars, breweries, Mexican and Asian kitchens — and East Hill has neighbourhood cafés and bars. The Saturday market in the Palafox district sells produce, plants and baked goods every Saturday.

Pensacola Beach's Boardwalk is where visitors eat with their feet in the sand: open-air seafood decks on Santa Rosa Sound, tiki bars, live music and sunset views back across the water to the city.