Between 1566 and 1567, Juan Pardo, a Spanish explorer and conquistador, following the earlier example of Hernando DeSoto, led two expeditions into the Carolina and Tennessee mountains.\u00a0 His objective was to claim land for Spain, and especially to discover an overland route to Spain\u2019s silver mines in Mexico.\u00a0 Pardo constructed Fort San Juan near present day Morganton, North Carolina, along with two other forts.\u00a0 But faced with the threat of an Indian attack on the Tennessee slopes of the Great Smoky Mountains, he decided to turn back.\u00a0 His retreat marked the end of Spain\u2019s attempt to find a land route to Mexico through Appalachia, and his three forts were slowly abandoned.\u00a0 By the 18th<\/span>\u00a0century, Britain replaced Spain as the colonial power in southern Appalachia.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0 This map\u00a0was created by Hieron. Chiaves (or Geronimo de Chavez) shortly after Hernando de Soto’s expedition of 1539-1542.<\/p><\/div>\n This map depicts the Native American town of Joara, or Xuala, between the mountains in the central portion of the map. First visited by Hernando de Soto’s expedition in 1540, the town was selected by\u00a0Juan Pardo as the site for Fort San Juan.<\/p>\n Multimedia:<\/p>\n [slideshow_deploy id=’6222′] Between 1566 and 1567, Juan Pardo, a Spanish explorer and conquistador, following the earlier example of Hernando DeSoto, led two expeditions into the Carolina and Tennessee mountains.\u00a0 His objective was to claim land for Spain, and especially to discover an overland route to Spain\u2019s silver mines in Mexico.\u00a0 Pardo constructed Fort San Juan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":6219,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,10],"tags":[46,76,104,224,279,318,493,555],"class_list":["post-3994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-people","tag-archaeology","tag-berry-farm","tag-burke-county","tag-fort","tag-hernando-de-soto","tag-juan-pardo","tag-spanish-exploration","tag-warren-wilson-college"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.wcu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.wcu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.wcu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.wcu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.wcu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3994"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.wcu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8753,"href":"https:\/\/dh.wcu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3994\/revisions\/8753"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.wcu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.wcu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.wcu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.wcu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"This](\"http:\/\/dh.wcu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Chiaves-la-florida-1584.jpg\")
<\/a>Below is the Digital Heritage Moment as broadcast on the radio:<\/h2>\n[audio:http:\/\/dh.wcu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Juan60Mx.mp3|titles=Juan60Mx]\n
External Links:<\/h3>\n
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