Fort Mose Historic State Park

Fort Mose Historic State Park is a U.S. National Historic Landmark , located two miles north of St. Augustine, Florida, on the edge of a salt marsh on the western side of the waterway separating the mainland from the coastal barrier islands. The original site of the 18th-century fort was uncovered in a 1986 archeological dig. The 24-acre site is now protected as a Florida State Park, administered through the Anastasia State Recreation Area. Fort Mose is the "premier site on the Florida Black Heritage Trail".
In 1738, the Spanish governor of Florida, Manuel de Montiano, had Fort Mose constructed and established it as a free black settlement, the first to be legally sanctioned in what would become the territory of the United States. The fort has also been called Fort Moosa or Fort Mossa, variants of the Spanish pronunciation.

As early as 1689, the colonial authorities of Spanish Florida had begun to offer asylum to escaped slaves fleeing from the Virginia Colony. In 1693, King Charles II of Spain issued a royal decree proclaiming that runaways would be granted asylum in Florida in return for converting to Catholicism, which required baptism with Christian names, and serving for four years in the colonial militia. By 1742 the community had grown into a maroon settlement similar to those in other European colonies in the Americas, and the Spanish utilized the settlement as the first line of defence against outside incursions into Florida.

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