ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA
ST. PATRICK'S DAY CELEBRATION

By  Mike Miller March 17, 2026

There is a lesser-known historical story connecting St. Patrick’s Day to Florida: the first recorded St. Patrick’s Day parade in what is now the United States.

This is probably the oldest continuous celebration tradition, and it took place in St. Augustine, Florida, way back in the early 1600s. long before the famous parades in Boston or New York.

In 1600 and 1601, an Irish chaplain named Padre Ricardo Artur (or Ricardo Arturo), serving in the Spanish colony of St. Augustine (the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in the continental U.S.), organized celebrations and processions on March 17 in honor of Ireland’s patron saint.

Records uncovered from Spanish archives show the 1601 event included a parade through the streets. This predates the commonly cited “first” parades by over a century: Boston in 1737 and New York in 1762.

What’s especially interesting is the context: it wasn’t driven by Irish immigrants (as later American parades were) but by a single devoted Irish priest in a Spanish Catholic colony, making it a unique early fusion of cultures far from Ireland itself.

St. Augustine still proudly claims this heritage today, with ongoing Celtic festivals, music events, and parades that tie back to that 400+ year-old tradition.

This fact often surprises people, as most associate the biggest U.S. St. Patrick’s Day scenes with northern cities, but Florida holds this quirky historical “first” in the Americas.

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