Our first stop in Fort Pierce was the St. Lucie County Regional History Center. I found out about this place when I looked up things to do in the St. Lucie area and since I love history, it sounded like a fun place to visit. The drive to Fort Pierce took us along Indian River Road, past splendid river front houses. Mom, Aunt Suzie, Jill, and I each picked out which one was our dream house. St. Lucie County Regional Historic Center is in the Hutchinson Island part of Fort Pierce. It's exhibits cover the history of the Indian River region from the Ais people who lived her for thousands of years before the Spanish supposedly "discovered" it, to the early Spanish settlers and the famous golden galleons, to the Seminole people and the pioneers and their conflicts over land, to the industries such as cattle, fruit, and tourism which have made the area what it is today.
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This part of Florida is known as the treasure coast because of the golden galleons, Spanish ships which sunk near here in the early 18th Century. They were laden with treasure from Cuba destined for Spain but only a few of them reached their destination. The rest were unearthed by divers in the 1970s.
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Fort Pierce was established in 1838 as a military outpost and is named after Benjamin Kendrick Pierce, a lieutenant-colonel in the US Army and a colonel in the Florida militia, as well as the brother of President Franklin Pierce. This was during the Second Seminole War, a conflict with the Seminole tribes over territory in Florida.
