1. Early Explorers By: Ella Burt

2. Christopher Columbus 1451-1506

3. Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer who sailed across the Atlantic ocean in 1492 in hopes of finding a route to India.

4. Columbu’s first trip was an expedition with 3 ships; the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.

5. Columbus thought he had made it to Asia, and called this area the Indies, and called its inhabitants Indians.

6. Juan Ponce de Leon 1460-1521

7. Ponce de Leon was a soldier fighting Muslims in southern Spain in the early 1490’s

8. In 1493 he sailed on Christopher Columbus’s second expedition to America and began searching for the fountain of youth.

9. He later heard of gold in what is now Puerto Rico and claimed the land for Spain.