Coastal Discovery Museum to host lecture

The Beaufort County Historical Society and the Beaufort County Library’s Beaufort District Collection will host a presentation on the history of Santa Elena and the Juan Pardo expeditions later this month at the Coastal Discovery Museum.

The program, titled “The Pardo Trail & Santa Elena,” is scheduled for 11 a.m. Thursday, May 28, as part of the organizations’ “Historically Speaking” series.

Dr. David Moore of Warren Wilson College will lead the presentation. Moore has worked for 25 years at the Berry Site near Morganton, North Carolina, where archaeologists uncovered evidence connected to Fort San Juan, one of several outposts established by Spanish Captain Juan Pardo during expeditions into the interior Southeast between 1566 and 1568.

According to event organizers, Santa Elena on present-day Parris Island served as Spain’s premier North American colony from 1566 to 1587 and was the capital of Spanish Florida until 1576.

Pardo arrived at Santa Elena with a contingent of conquistadores after being tasked with establishing an overland route connecting Parris Island to silver mines in northern Mexico, according to the event description. Expeditions from Santa Elena ranged as far north as the Chesapeake Bay, as far south as Key West and as far west as Tennessee.

Moore is a faculty member in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Warren Wilson College. Organizers said he has directed excavations at sites including Hardaway, Warren Wilson and Berry, and has conducted research in North Carolina’s upper Catawba Valley since 1986.

The presentation is free and open to the public. For more information visit www.beaufortcountyhistoricalsociety.com.