10 Facts That Prove Florida Is America's Craziest State

6. Cemetery Pyramids €“ St. Augustine

The oldest continuously occupied city in the nation, Pedro Menendez de Aviles founded St. Augustine in 1565 and it stood as the capital of Spanish Florida for 200 years. In fact, it remained the capital of East Florida and the Florida Territory until 1824 when someone decided Tallahassee was better. We all know which one is easier to spell. The United States eventually took possession of the old St. Francis Barracks in St. Augustine to use as a small post cemetery. The first peopled buried there were victims from the Seminole Wars, which occurred when the U.S. government tried to force Native Americans and blacks off of their lands in Florida. In 1842, the Army relocated the bodies of 1400 soldiers from temporary burial locations across the territory to St. Augustine for interment in three mass graves. Included in the mass burial was Major Francis L. Dade, namesake of Dade County and veteran of the Indian Wars. It was decided that three large pyramids made from coquina, a naturally occurring stone along the beach, would mark the graves. In 1885 it was named a National Cemetery and a memorial was built to honour the lost soldiers and Indians of the Seminole Wars. The locals say that at night you can still hear the spirits fighting over being interred in the same tomb for eternity.