The Ribault Monument commemorates the 1562 landing of Jean Ribault near the mouth of the St. Johns River. He erected a stone column bearing the coats of arms of his French King Charles IX.
During the early 1920s a movement began in the Florida Chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution to mark the location of Ribault’s first arrival in the New World.
The goal was to highlight the beginnings of European colonization of Florida by Protestants - for the sake of religious freedom - and to remind Americans that this colony was established half a century prior to the Plymouth Colony.
