Is St. John's the oldest city in North America?
St. John's is the oldest city in North America, founded in 1497.
St. John's is one of the oldest European settlements in North America, with fishing settlement reaching back to the early 1600s and incorporation as a city in 1888. But Memorial University historian Jeff Webb, speaking to CBC, calls the flat 'oldest city' claim a foolish game: 1497 is the year John Cabot's expedition sighted the area (a visit, not a founding), St. Augustine in Florida was permanently settled in 1565, and the answer depends entirely on how you define oldest, city, and continuously. Within Canada, Cupids (1610) holds the oldest-continuous-English-settlement claim.
The story they tell
The tourist version - a city founded in 1497, older than everywhere else on the continent - stitches Cabot's landfall to four later centuries of seasonal fishery and settlement to produce a clean slogan.
How to get there
St. John's is at the eastern end of the Trans-Canada, Route 1. Water Street is the street the claim is about.
Some story
