Ponce de Leon’s discovery of Florida in 1513 was no accident. This lecture provides little known facts behind his quest for Bimini, the Fountain of Youth, and his struggle to maintain his charter to colonize Florida that resulted in his death by a poisoned arrow in 1521. My historical research uncovered evidence that Ponce’s charter for colonizing Bimini was always intended to be Florida and not the Bimini of the Bahamas. This research reveals that the 1520 Pineda map had a note “Florida formerly Bimini” written on the depiction of Florida. The intrigues of the Columbus family vying for the Bimini charter from the king of Spain will be discussed. A theory of the origin of the Fountain of Youth will be presented based on archaeological excavations of Mid-Archaic cemeteries in Florida such as Windover, where 6000 to 8000 year old human burials were uncovered. The Southeastern indigenous belief that lakes and rivers are barriers that can separate the living from the dead, and the Tequesta belief that your reflection in the water was one of three souls. Their belief that water is an integral part of the underworld may explain the immortality offered by the “Foutain of Youth” being a miscommunication between indigenous people and Europeans, who did not understand that the sacred waters offered by the mortuary ponds represent the immortality of the soul and not the flesh.