Desoto National Memorial

First full disclosure. I had bad childhood experineces here so I have an extra bad attitude I'm trying to keep down.

It's pretty underwhelming for a national park. Not run badly it's just very small and not much to it. It's where the Spanish Conquistador Hernando Desoto landed around 1540. There's a short mangrove swamp trail, a gift shop, and a mock village.
It's a bit of a controversial spot. The Desoto parade was a big deal here since forever but the national view on history in recent decades has gone from cowboys over indians to "hey - that was genocide!". So the parks service has the impossible task of "balancing" that. And they try. It is kind of cool how they have cutouts of natives and conquistadors hidden on the mangrove hiking trail. Easy to imagine the meetings. There's a huge cross and I believe there was a statue at one point that people protested and/or vandalized because the whole genocide thing. I can't imagine being interested enough but if you want to see that statue I believe they moved it to the Bishop Planetarium / museum. That is a very very nice museum although they did just kill the county mascot there by drowning him with a badly designed door. (sigh) That said there used to be a recreation of an old spanish chapel related to the statue.