Marco Rubio Marks St. Augustine's 450th Birthday

September marks the 450th anniversary of the founding of St. Augustine, the oldest town in the United States. 

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., penned a piece which appeared in Monday’s St. Augustine Record looking at the founding of the Ancient City and what it means for our country today.

“Nearly 450 years ago, Spanish settlers fulfilled their dreams of building a new world by founding the city of St. Augustine,” Rubio wrote. “This city’s past can teach us a great deal about who we are today, both as Floridians and as Americans. But just as the theme of this celebration calls us to ‘find ourselves in our past,’ we should also seize this opportunity to look ahead to the challenges and opportunities of the future.
 
“St. Augustine’s 450 years have been filled with leaders who saw the potential the future offered. The Spanish settlers who first founded the city took on the unknown in the New World to found what would become America’s oldest city,” Rubio continued. “In the 1880s, Henry Flagler looked forward and transformed St. Augustine into a destination unlike any other, leading to an economic boom that would elevate the city to a level its settlers wouldn’t have thought possible. And in the 1960s, as the nation faced changes that many thought would tear us apart, civil rights leaders chose St. Augustine as the rally point for their cause.
 
“Now it is our generation’s turn to look ahead to the future. In this new century, we have the chance to expand the American Dream to reach more people than ever before,” Rubio added. “Like the Spanish settlers 450 years ago, like Henry Flagler in the 1880s and like the civil rights leaders in the 1960s, we are now facing an opportunity to take America forward and fulfill our potential to be greater than we’ve ever been.”

The piece can be read here.