The man most famous for searching for the Fountain of Youth never actually looked for it. This deep dive uses contracts, royal decrees and historical accounts to reveal Juan Ponce de León as a ruthless colonial administrator and political survivor, shaped by the end of the Granada War and the opening of the Americas.

We follow him from Columbus’s second voyage to the violent suppression of the Taíno in Higüey, the encomienda system, gold in Puerto Rico, and his ouster after Diego Colón won his lawsuit against the crown. We then explore the 1513 voyage that named La Florida and revealed the Gulf Stream, clashes with the Calusa, his fatal wound in 1521, and how later writers grafted the fountain legend onto his name.

• Why young Spanish nobles flocked to the New World after 1492
• What the encomienda system really meant
• How a lawsuit by Columbus’s son cost him Puerto Rico
• The accidental discovery of the Gulf Stream
• How the fountain myth was invented decades after his death