A statue of St. Francis of Assisi a in museum at historic St. Francis Barracks in St. Augustine, Fla. The barracks is the oldest military site in the nation.

Florida likes to boast that its National Guard headquarters in historic St. Francis Barracks, St. Augustine, is the oldest military site in the nation, beating West Point by 16 years.

Greg Moore, Florida National Guard historian, is passionate about the barracks and how it had been used by Spanish, British, American and, for a short time, Confederate soldiers.

“It’s how deep our roots go,” citing St. Augustine’s founding in 1588. The grounds the barracks stand on have been used also as a monastery for the Franciscan Order and the namesake of the barracks and an orphanage.

The original structure was a series of log and palm thatch buildings for the monastery and chapel.

Following a British attack on the city in the early 18^th century that left it a smoldering ruing, the Spanish authorities decided to rebuild in stone.

When the British took control of Florida following the French and Indian War that ended in 1763, they converted the monastery to a military barracks and added a larger wooden barracks on adjacent land.

Moore said the original Spanish goal almost 500 years ago “was to drive out the French,” who were settling on land near what is now the Georgia-Florida border.

In that group 50 men formed a militia unit.

“That beats the ‘first muster’ in Massachusetts in 1636 and the settlement of the English at Jamestown.”

The federal government abandoned the post in 1900, but seven years later leased it to the state for its headquarters. A fire gutted the headquarters in 1915 and it took seven years from that to rebuild.