The community is invited to witness another step in the decades-long quest to honor the first steps of Juan Ponce de Leon in Florida.
On Saturday, Nov. 2, a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the installation of flags and the dedication of an inscribed wall will take place from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Ponce de Leon Landing Park, 4005 Highway A1A in Melbourne Beach.
The event is presented by United Third Bridge (U.T.B.), the Florida Puerto Rican/Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the Brevard County Board of Commissioners, the Royal Order of Don Juan Ponce de Leon, Brevard County Parks and Recreation Department, and the Juan Ponce de Leon Historical Site.
Opening remarks will be made by U.T.B President Samuel Lopez, as well as Mary Ellen Donner, director of Brevard County Parks and Recreation. The keynote speaker will be former New York City Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell.
Other scheduled speakers include Melbourne Beach Historian Frank Thomas; Douglas Peck, son of Lt. Col. Douglas T. Peck; John Ayes-Brown, a de Leon descendent; and Kyle Kennedy, president of Seafarer Exploration. Food and refreshments will be served.
The new flag poles and inscribed wall are part of the next phase in enhancing the historical site. In 2013, a 10-foot bronze statue of the Spanish conquistador was unveiled at the park, in conjunction with the 500th anniversary of his historic landing and discovery of “La Florida.”
“People are going to the park and taking photos with the statue so the county is seeing all the activity the statue is generating and came back to us to say, let’s finish it,” Lopez said.
Though St. Augustine was often credited as the first landing spot of Juan Ponce de Leon, many historians now say Melbourne Beach is the more likely location. But without de Leon’s original expedition log, it was suggested the only way to find out the true landing spot was to re-enact it using navigation from a copy of the log transcribed in 1601.
Retired Air Force Pilot Lt. Col. John T. Peck accepted the challenge. And his 1990 journey aboard the 33-foot cutter Gooney Bird, led him 125 miles south of St. Augustine – to Melbourne Beach.
His research was published the following year by the Florida Historical Quarterly, and several well-known historians have come to support it, including Michael Gannon, a retired University of Florida professor, known as the dean of Florida history, and Eugene Lyon, the former director of the St. Augustine Foundation at Flagler College.
In 2005 the county officially renamed the 25-acre park as Juan Ponce de Leon Landing Park and installed a historic marker detailing Peck’s re-enactment.
“Since we started, this project has received some push-back, but once the landmark was given to us by the state and National Geographic came out in support of Peck, everything totally changed,” Lopez said.
Future plans for the park may include a community center or museum.
For more information, call 321-863-5165 or visit www.fprhcc.org.
