Was first 'Lost Colony' in Burke County?

If Hernando de Soto and Juan Pardo had been successful and established a series of permanent settlements, we might all be speaking Spanish in this country rather than English. That’s one conclusion that archeologist Rob Beck of the University of Oklahoma likes to tell people about when he describes the discovery of Fort San Juan on the upper Catawba River in Burke County north of Morganton.
That fort was established by de Soto’s men in 1567 – a couple of decades before Sir Walter Raleigh’s expedition set out from England and established a colony on Roanoke Island that disappeared – and became known as the Lost Colony.
The Fort San Juan story is told in a new episode of UNC-TV’s “Exploring North Carolina” series produced by narrator Tom Earnhardt of Raleigh and videographer Joe Albea of Greenville. It airs tonight at 8:30 p.m. and repeats Friday, Feb. 1 at 9:30 p.m. and Sunday, Feb. 3 at 6 p.m.
The program describes how Beck and other archeologists, including David Moore of Warren Wilson College near Asheville and Christopher Rodning of Tulane, assembled the evidence that linked the 12-acre site in Burke County to a known site at Parris Island. S.C., where Spanish explorers established a fort in what then was called northern Florida.
From there the Spaniards set out to explore the interior, establishing forts near Indian villages. The hope was not just to convert natives to Catholicism, but also to build a road linking the East Coast with Mexico where the Spanish had opened silver mines. Evidently their belief was that the Blue Ridge Mountains were part of the same mountains they could see from Mexico – mistaking the Rockies for the Appalachian chain.
The natives evidently tired of the Spaniards at Fort San Juan and burned down the fort after 18 months. For hundreds of years the exact locations of the forts the Spanish established has been unknown, but the researchers believe they have amassed enough compelling evidence – partly with the help of an obscure Spanish diary that had been in the N.C. Department of Archives and History for a long time – that they have found the first Lost Colony.
Interesting that both the Spanish Lost Colony and the English Lost Colony were in North Carolina – putting this state, Dr. Beck said, at the epicenter of the Age of Discovery.