Cubo Line

The Cubo Line was part of the defense system built by the Spanish to protect the presidio of St. Augustine (San Agustín) in the territory of Spanish Florida (La Florida) during the early years of the 18th century.

History
After the 1702 siege of St. Augustine and its burning to the ground by troops under the command of James Moore, governor of the English colony of Carolina, the Spanish determined to improve the defenses of St. Augustine outside the confines of their massive masonry fortress, the Castillo de San Marcos. Because the English had entered the city by way of the peninsula on which the town sat, in 1704 Governor José de Zúñiga ordered the building of a defensive system of earthworks, palisades, and redoubts around the exposed sides of the town. In 1706 work commenced on another wall about 1/2 mile north of the Cubo Line; it was called the Hornabeque Line (or Hornwork Line) for its "Horns", or demi-bastions, that protruded like the horns of a bull at both ends. Another wall, the Rosario Line, was built in 1718 running south from the Santo Domingo Redoubt for almost a mile then turning east to Matanzas Bay. These inner defensive walls prevented Gen. James Oglethorpe, the governor of the English colony of Georgia, from occupying or razing St. Augustine during his siege of 1740.

The Cubo Line consisted of an earth defensive wall covered with sharp-leaved yucca surrounding a nine-foot-high palm log stockade that stretched about half a mile from the Castillo to the San Sebastian River. An approximately 40-foot wide moat ran parallel to the line and its three artillery redoubts (the Santo Domingo, the Medio Cubio, and the Cubo), with a small bridge spanning it at the town's main gate. The Cubo Line demarcated the northern limits of St. Augustine from the northwest bastion westward to the San Sebastian River.