Florida archaeologists got more — way more — than they bargained for when they started digging near Chipley, Florida. According to The Cooldown, an excavation for a Civil War battlefield instead turned up remains of a lost Spanish mission dating two centuries earlier:
Researchers had long believed the mission was somewhere in Washington County, west of Marianna, but its exact location had remained unknown.
“There was a Spanish mission here in 1674, 1675,” historian Dale Cox said, per MyPanhandle.
“Researchers have always known that it was somewhere west of Marianna, but no one ever really knew where.”
According to Cox, the find grew out of an archaeological effort sponsored by a nonprofit with which he is affiliated to find a Civil War battlefield. During the process, Spanish artifacts were discovered.
“And since there are no other recorded Spanish settlements in this entire stretch of West Florida between about Marianna and Pensacola, you know, we knew we had found the lost mission,” he added.
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“We would love to find the traces of the chapel, which was, of course, the central structure of a mission,” Cox said, per MyPanhandle. “We have found artifacts from both cultures, from Spanish and from Native Americans. So we would really like to find that chapel so we can be, you know, at the center of the mission community.”
Cox said the team hopes some of the artifacts recovered in the next excavation can eventually be shown in local museums.