The Matanzas River runs along the western and southern edges of St. Augustine, forming the body of water that separates downtown from Anastasia Island and continuing south for roughly 22 miles to the Matanzas Inlet near Marineland. It is the waterway that every sunset cruise navigates, that every boat tour explores, and that gave the area its name - Matanzas being Spanish for slaughters, a reference to the 1565 massacre of French Huguenot soldiers near its banks. The name comes from one of the darkest episodes in the early history of North America. In September 1565, Spanish forces under Pedro Menéndez de Avilés - the same commander who had founded St. Augustine just weeks earlier - captured and executed nearly 350 French Huguenot soldiers near the banks of this river. The French soldiers, survivors of a shipwreck and stranded without a viable escape, surrendered to the Spanish. Most were killed. The river has carried the name ever since. The river is technically the southern section of the Intracoastal Waterway, a sheltered inland waterway running parallel to the Atlantic coast. In the St. Augustine area it forms Matanzas Bay - the expansive body of water visible from the bayfront Avenida Menendez waterfront walk, from the Bridge of Lions, and from every vantage point along the historic district's eastern edge. Ecologically the Matanzas River and its surrounding estuaries represent some of the most productive coastal habitat in Florida. Dolphins are a near-constan