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Finding the Lost Fort San Marcos

Dr. Chester DePratter
santa-elena.org

Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, the founder and first governor of La Florida, established several outposts in what is now the southeastern United States. One was at St. Augustine in 1565 and another in 1566 at the former French outpost of Charlesfort, now known as Santa Elena. In total, the colony of Santa Elena lasted for little more than two decades, as the Spanish abandoned the town in 1587.

In the summer of 2016, the Santa Elena Foundation announced that Dr. Chester DePratter and Dr. Victor Thompson had located the long-lost Fort San Marcos, which was built on the Santa Elena site in 1577. Dr. Thompson, of the Center for Archaeological Sciences and the Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA; and Dr. DePratter, of the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at USC, talk with Walter Edgar about how the site of the fort was discovered using non-invasive techniques.

All Stations: Fri, Feb 03, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Feb 05, 4 pm

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Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.