Florida

La Florida

Florida’s name is one of the oldest European place names in the United States. In April 1513 the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León, the first known European to reach the peninsula, claimed it for Spain and called it La Florida. The usual explanation combines two reasons: he arrived during the Easter season, known in Spanish as Pascua Florida, the “flowery feast,” and the land was thick with plants. Historians still debate how much each counted.

Spain founded St. Augustine in 1565, the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the continental United States, and held Florida for most of the next two and a half centuries, apart from twenty years of British rule. In 1821 Spain ceded Florida to the United States. Congress set up a territorial government in 1822, and on March 3, 1845, President John Tyler signed the act that made Florida the 27th state.

A capital in the middle

When Florida became American, its two main towns, Pensacola in the west and St. Augustine in the east, were hundreds of miles apart, and the territorial legislature had to travel between them. In 1823 two commissioners chose a site roughly halfway between, among the hills of the Panhandle: Tallahassee. The legislature first met there in 1824, in log cabins. The capital page tells the story, including how protesters saved the old Capitol when the new tower went up in the 1970s.

The Sunshine State

“The Sunshine State” first appeared on Florida’s license plates in 1949, and state law still provides for it on standard plates, but no law adopting it as the official nickname can be found. The official motto is “In God We Trust,” which has been on the state seal since 1868 and was adopted as the motto by law in 2006.

Florida is famously flat. Its highest natural point, in Walton County in the Panhandle, is only 345 feet above sea level, the lowest high point of any state. Nearly a fifth of its total area is water.

Oranges, alligators and manatees

Florida has 46 official symbols, and many of them come from its citrus groves and its wildlife. The orange blossom has been the state flower since 1909, orange juice the state beverage since 1967 and the orange the state fruit since 2005. The state animal is the Florida panther, chosen by a statewide vote of students in 1982. The American alligator is the state reptile, the manatee the state marine mammal, and the gopher tortoise, whose burrows shelter more than 350 other species, the state tortoise. The state bird is the mockingbird, adopted in 1927, though recent bills have tried to replace it with the flamingo. Key lime pie is the official state pie. See every symbol on the Florida symbols page.

The flag is white with a red diagonal cross and the state seal at its center.

Land and people

Florida covers 65,758 square miles, 22nd among the states, of which more than 12,000 square miles is water. With about 23.5 million residents in 2025, it is the third most populous state, after California and Texas, and it has added nearly 2 million people since 2020. It borders only Alabama and Georgia by land, and the rest of its long boundary is coastline on the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf. Jacksonville is the largest city, followed by Miami, Tampa and Orlando, although metropolitan Miami is by far the largest urban area.