In 1856, some copper coins were found near here bearing the inscription:
KAROLUS ET JOANNA RE.
They were identified by Mr. Buckingham Smith as of the reign of Carlos I. (Charles V.) and Donna Juanna, and therefore date from about 1550.
More recently a coin of about the same period, and from the same spot, but with a different and not fully legible inscription was exhibited to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia.
During the late civil war the Bluff was fortified by a detachment of Confederate troops, and for some days held against the gunboats of the United States forces. At length they were out-flanked by a party of Union soldiers, who made their way in the rear by the margin of the swamp, and the work was surrendered.
A few miles beyond the bluff the boat stops at
YELLOW BLUFF.
It has a post office and one small boarding-house, ($8.00 per week,) about 40 inhabitants, mostly engaged in fishing. Near by is a small fort, built during the recent war, and on the opposite bank of the river, on a plantation called New Castle, are an Indian mound and the vestiges of an ancient, quadrilateral earthwork of Spanish origin.
Yellow Bluff was first chosen by Col. I. D. Hart as the city which he proposed to build on the St. John, but as he found some marsh land near which he thought might prove disadvantageous to such a large city as he contemplated founding, he passed further up the stream and built his cabin on the spot now known as the “Cow’s Ford,” where the King’s Road in the old days crossed the river and connected St. Augustine with the northern settlements, twenty-five miles above the bar. This spot, then occupied by a few straggling whites and half breeds, is now the site of the flourishing city of