Plaza de Luna

For me, downtown Pensacola was a new concept. It was real, and quite extensive. We traveled the main thoroughfare, which had the unlikely name of Palafox Street, all the way to its terminus at Pensacola Bay - a place called Plaza de Luna. This is what it looked like. The statue represents Spanish conquistador Don Tristan de Luna, the man who first attempted to colonize Pensacola in 1559 (but apparently ran into problems, including hunger, Indians, and a deadly hurricane). It was one of the earliest colonial settlements in the continental U.S.