Will Tampa Bay history attract tourists? Local author thinks so

James E. MacDougald is a man on a mission.

The retired business executive has spent nearly 20 years trying to get city and county officials to commemorate an important moment in history: The arrival in 1528 of Spanish explorer Panfilo de Narvaez, on the shore of what’s now Boca Ciega Bay, in the vicinity of Jungle Prada in western St. Petersburg.

Historically, there had been some doubt as to the exact location of the landing site. Through careful analysis of period and contemporary maps, the known site of a nearby Tocobaga Indian village, understanding of 16^th century navigation (and modern science) plus the written descriptions of a member of the Narvaez party, MacDougald was able to say that this is where they came ashore (there’s a boat ramp there now).

From there, Narvaez launched the first-ever European expedition into the North American continent, a perilous journey north through Florida, across the present-day Gulf States and into the West. Co-explorer Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca’s book consisted of the first published words about the so-called new world and its people.

And it all began in St. Petersburg, where there’s no monument, just a vaguely-worded, blue historical marker that’s not even visible from Park Street, the nearest road.

MacDougald believes an opportunity for history-based tourism is being missed.

“If you don’t know where it happened, it didn’t happen,” MacDougald says. “You need a sense of place. That’s why people go to the southern-most points in the continental United States and get their picture taken. Or they go to the Kitty Hawk monument – it’s just an empty field, there’s nothing really to see, except it’s where the first manned flight took place. The heavier-than-air flight.

“And we don’t do that in Florida, even with this great history here.”

In 2018 he published The Panfilo de Narvaez Expedition of 1528: Highlights of the Expedition and Determination of The Landing Place.

He sent a copy of the meticulously-researched book to every City Councilmember and every County Commissioner, and to nearly every state department in Tallahassee. Former mayors Rick Baker and Rick Kriseman expressed support for MacDougald’s proposed statue – designed by local sculptor Mark Aeling – commemorating the momentous occasion.

“I pitched it to them, I printed it all out … and it died. And I was a one-man band. If you see the movies about the cold case files, it’s this one detective in a back room, and nobody cares about it, but he’s digging up DNA evidence.

“This is a cold case file. Everybody thinks it’s over, that everything that was known 30 years ago is true. And I’m re-opening the file saying hey, we’ve got maps now they didn’t know existed 30 years ago. And here’s what the maps show.”

After a second heavily-researched and annotated book, The Maps That Changed Florida, failed to light a fire under anyone in authority, MacDougald was complaining to a friend. “I said I’m frustrated – I’ve been working on this for 20 years, and nobody wants to know.”

The response was just what the dogged researcher needed to hear. “He said why don’t you just write it as a story?” MacDougald recalls. “People don’t want to read a 350-page, footnoted book with all kinds of obscure details in it. Just tell the story.”

Published in July by Marsden House, For God, Glory, and Gold: Spanish Exploration of la Florida and the Mainland tells the entire story in 35 pages, augmented by 20 pages of color maps originating in the 16^th century.

It’s what MacDougald calls “a succinct and easily digestible” format. “Just tell the story about who came here,” he says, “and what was significant about it?”

There’s gold in these new pages, too. Those maps he located were huge, and covered just about everything Spanish sailing men of the time knew about the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of North America.

He had them scanned in high-resolution and digitized; once enlarged, the maps revealed tiny lettering not easily visible to the naked eye.

And there it was, in what we today call Old Tampa Bay: “B. de Juhan Ponce,” the Bay of Juan Ponce.

Seven years before Narvaez landed at Boca Ciega, Juan Ponce de León was known to have established the first European settlement in North America (St. Augustine, the first continually occupied city, was founded in 1565).

Again, the exact site of the de León landing and settlement was a question mark for historians.

MacDougald, who works with accredited scholars, academics and other experts on Spanish exploration, believes he solved the mystery. Safety Harbor, which was once the site of a Tocobaga city, was where de León began his colony.

The old Spanish maps, he discovered, have latitude designations that correspond very closely to today’s GPS coordinates. He found the Bay of Juan Ponce at 27.5 degrees North. “That’s the entrance to Tampa Bay. And why would they name it after him if he hadn’t been there?”

At the end of his first book, MacDougald mused about a one-day expedition Narvaez and Cabeza de Vaca took to the Tocobaga city. Cabeza de Vaca reported that the villagers were in possession of numerous Spanish artifacts, tools and clothing, and “many cargo boxes from Castile.”

This, he reasoned, could only mean that de León, who died from battle wounds received in the area, had attempted to settle there. His colony lasted all of four months.

Narvaez died during his company’s inland exploration in 1528; Cabeza de Vaca was one of just four survivors who walked to the Pacific Ocean, after traveling eight years and 4,000 miles.

Another survivor was Estevanico, a Moroccan slave who was historians call “The first great Black man in America.” It was “the longest survival journey in the history of the new world,” MacDougald explains.

“And then Hernando de Soto came here because Cabeza de Vaca told him to! He told him this was the best port in the world. So all the Spanish entries – they’re called entradas – happened here. Yet nobody knows it.”

One of MacDougald’s proposals – possibly for downtown, with Tampa Bay as a backdrop – is a statue of Estevanico, Cabeza de Vaca and the Tocobaga chieftain, together with an educational plaque explaining their significance.

With For God, Glory, and Gold making the story “succinct and easily digestible,” Jim MacDougald, cold case detective, has a four-year plan. “The year 2028 is the 500^th anniversary of the Narvaez landing. I’m aiming for in the next two or three years getting the City, the County and the State to recognize that this happened,” he explains.

“Not just because I said so – do their own research, look all the research of the other people who have come to the conclusion that this is something worthy of being commemorated.

“The purpose of the book is to hope that it’s short enough, and simple enough, and powerful enough to where somebody will read it and say ‘Wow, that’s worth commemorating.’ And then off they go.

“And maybe that’ll happen. If not, I’ve given it my best shot.”

For God, Glory, and Gold is available from Amazon.