FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. – Historic downtown Fernandina Beach will wrap up the 55th Annual Isle of Eight Flags Shrimp Festival Sunday. Organizers said the festival featuree food, music and antiques, as well as arts and crafts.
Pirates will be running around the streets. There's a kids zone with activities geared specifically for the little ones.
Recommended Videos
The celebration includes all the shrimp you can eat, cooked in just about every way you can imagine, concerts in the evenings and fireworks.
You can see a complete rundown of the shrimp Festival festivities by clicking on the link below.
There's a unique history behind the event and purpose for the celebration, which dates back to the 1500's and earlier.
As the only territory in the U.S. under the dominion of eight flags during the past five centuries, it absorbed much from each culture. Before the first flag flew above the island, the Timucua inhabited the area they called Napoyca.
From around 2500 B.C. to 1562 A.D., they lived with an abundance of vegetation and shellfish. They had no written language, but are believed to have lived long, healthy lives, due in part to their diet but primarily because of the absence of European diseases.
Their way of life continued for centuries, until the arrival of a company of Frenchmen, led by Jean Ribault, on May 3, 1562. Ribault had sailed for the New World in search of a site for a Huguenot colony.
When he came upon the island, he claimed it for France and named it the Isle de Mai, for the month in which he discovered it.
The French lived in relative harmony with the Timucua until they were bloodily defeated by the Spanish troops of Pedro Menendez de Aviles in 1565.
More information on the history is available at the museum in historic Fernandina Beach.