Florida

Florida entered the Union on March 3, 1845, becoming the nation’s twenty-seventh state. Known as the Sunshine State, it has Tallahassee as its capital and Jacksonville as its largest city by population. The peninsula lies between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, with a landscape that includes extensive coastlines, wetlands, the Everglades, and the Florida Keys.

Spanish explorers reached Florida during the sixteenth century, and St. Augustine, founded in 1565, became the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in the continental United States. Florida later passed between Spanish and British control before becoming a United States territory in 1821. Railroads, land development, tourism, and the growth of the space program transformed the state during the twentieth century.