When you park your RV for your staycation at Navarre Beach Camping Resort, you might want to visit Pensacola. Our RV park is just 25 miles east of there and Pensacola has some interesting history.
The storied past and area of Pensacola, Florida is hinted about in the following nicknames:
- The City of Five Flags because of the five governments that ruled it at one time: Spain, France, Great Britain, the United States and the Confederate States of America
- The World’s Whitest Beaches due to the white sand of Florida panhandle beaches
- Cradle of Naval Aviation
- Western Gate to the Sunshine State
- America’s First Settlement
- Emerald Coast
- Red Snapper Capital of the World
- P-Cola
History
Steeped in history, the Pensacola area was originally home to the Muskogean peoples known to the Spanish as the Pensacola, most likely the source of the name. The Pensacola people lived there when the Europeans came. Visitors and traders included the Creek people from present-day southern Alabama.
The Spanish established a presidio in the Pensacola in 1698 providing the modern city with its roots, from which the modern city gradually developed.
The US Navy
The first United States Naval Air Station is located southwest of Pensacola near Warrington, commissioned in 1914. The base houses the Blue Angels flight demonstration team and the National Naval Aviation Museum.
Many thousands of naval aviators received training there, including John H. Glenn, USMC, the first American to orbit the earth in 1962, and Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon in 1969.