Juan Ponce De Leon: Fountain Of Youth

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Ponce De Leon Juan De Leon may be the best known explorer to do what he did. Juan was searching for a spring called the “Fountain of Youth.” Water from spring was to be magical; it could make an older person young again. In fact, De Leon never founded the Fountain of Youth, but he was much more than a chaser of fairytales. Juan was a soldier, farmer, governor, and most of all, he was an explorer. De Leon was pronounced the first European to step foot on new land, he called Florida. Ponce De Leon, a Spanish explorer was searching for the Foundation of Youth, which was said to be in the Bahamas but discovered the land we know as Florida and its features. In 1493, Ponce de León sailed with Christopher Columbus on Columbus' second voyage to the Americas. Juan and his family settled on an island named Hispaniola in the Caribbean. De Leon was one of the first Europeans to see the small island of Borinquen, which is the Indian name for Puerto Rico. Ponce de Leon sailed to Puerto Rico in 1506 with 200 hundred men to the island to find rich gold deposits. De Leon forced enslaved natives to mine…show more content…
De León entered the Charlotte Harbor area. As he and his men explored inland for wood and fresh water, as they saw the Calusa tribal village at Mound Key, they knew that the Calusa were an unfriendly tribe. The explorers quickly fled to their ships and may their way back to Puerto Rico. In 1521, Ponce de León returned to Florida again to form a colony. He came with over 200 settlers, horses, tools, and seeds expecting set up a farming colony. As they move towards the inland, the Calusa ambushed them. Ponce de León was shot by a poisoned arrow and was terribly wounded. The settlers decided to retreat from the settlement and sail back to Cuba. That wound caused Ponce de León to die at the age of 61 in Cuba. He was always remembered as the first to explore many areas of Florida in search for the mythical fountain of

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