Jacksonville, Florida

The flags of four different nations (Spain, France, England, and the United States) have flown over the historic city of Jacksonville, the seat of Duval County, in northeast Florida. The city was founded as a shipping port, market, and distribution center, and has since become a popular tourist destination, as well as the most populous city in the state. Jacksonville was built on the water, and the city's economy is still largely defined by that fact.

Landscape

Jacksonville sits at the bend of the St. Johns River, the largest north-flowing river in the United States. It is a modern city of concrete, glass, and steel high-rises, but funds have been allocated to set aside and preserve its remaining stretches of riverside wilderness and green space. The average elevation of Jacksonville is twenty feet above sea level, and the area's climate is sunny and tropical—twelve months without snow.

Cargo and cruise ships approach Jacksonville by river from the Atlantic Ocean, but most tourists arrive by interstate highway: I-95 from the north or south, I-10 from the west. State Road A1A follows the scenic coastline, passing through Jacksonville along the way.

Downtown Jacksonville streets conform to a grid of north-south and east-west streets. Since 1968, however, Jacksonville city limits and Duval County limits have been legally identical; so there is much more to the city than the downtown grid. Jacksonville is a collection of communities with a range that include commercial and residential, traditional and modern, struggling and affluent areas. In general, these are situated along the curving St. Johns River or one of its many wandering branches, each with its own name: Trout River, Ribault River, Broward River, Ortega River, Fishing Creek, Cedar Creek, Dunn Creek.

At 747 square miles, Jacksonville is the largest city in the contiguous United States by land area; it also has more than 127 square miles of water area.

People

Modern Jacksonville, with an estimated population of 971,319 in 2022, is a multinational, multiracial city. Once part of the segregated South, it has in large part rejected that inheritance. African Americans comprise 30.4 percent of the population, and are politically active and effective in city planning and government. Each May, the Kuumba Festival is held in A. Philip Randolph Park to celebrate the city's African American heritage with music, traditional food, and a parade. A significant number of people of Asian descent (4.9 percent) also live in Jacksonville, and 11.3 percent of its residents self-identify as Hispanic or Latino.

Many different religious groups have meeting places in Jacksonville. Southern Baptists have predominated among Christian denominations, followed by Roman Catholics, with nearly every Protestant group represented in the city. Institutions include African Methodist Episcopal churches, Greek Orthodox churches, synagogues, and mosques.

Economy

The Port of Jackson is publicly owned, and the Jacksonville Port Facility (Jaxport) develops, manages, and markets the shipping and harbor facilities, which include public marine terminals and a cruise ship terminal. Although Jacksonville exports goods chiefly to Caribbean and South American port cities, it also exports to nations such as Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Activity at the ports contributes $31.1 billion annually to the economy of the Jacksonville metropolitan area, according to Business Facilities in 2023. In 2022, 1.3 million containers and 553,000 vehicles moved through the facility. In May 2023, Jaxport set a record with the arrival of One Stork, the largest container ship to ever arrive at the port. The ship has a carrying capacity of 14,000 TEUs. Jaxport estimates that more than 138,000 jobs in northeast Florida are directly or indirectly port-related. To assure future economic vitality, the harbor and its twenty-three-mile shipping channel to the Atlantic, the St. Johns River, were deepened by several feet. Dredging, coordinated by the US Army Corps of Engineers, begun in 2002 under the Water Resources Development Act was completed in 2004; to accommodate ever larger container ships, additional deepening work commenced in 2017.

As is its marine trade, Jacksonville's $3.8 billion tourist trade is dependent on the city's natural resources. These include, for swimmers, fifty miles of white-sand beaches and accessible barrier islands. Boating is popular among both residents and tourists, and the city operates docks for their convenience in four locations, with rental boats available. Saltwater fishing and surfing are also popular throughout Jacksonville, while more than sixty acres of freshwater lakes tempt fishermen at Kathryn Abbey Hanna Park.

Thanks to the temperate weather, Jacksonville's tennis courts and golf courses are open twelve months each year. Every March, the Players Championship golf tournament, a PGA event, takes place in Jacksonville, as does the GATE River Run, a fifteen-kilometer race which draws nine thousand runners annually. Miles of hiking trails through ecologically diverse habitats attract birdwatchers and other nature lovers.

For less active sports lovers, the NFL's Jacksonville Jaguars are the city's only major professional sports team. Their stadium was refurbished and upgraded to host the 2005 Superbowl. College football's Gator Bowl, which later took on corporate brand naming, is held annually on New Year's Day. Greyhound races are also held at area tracks.

Of Jacksonville's many shopping areas, the most popular is Jackson's Landing, with a lively assortment of shops and cafes located downtown along the St Johns River. In October, the Greater Jacksonville Agricultural Fair draws Floridians from miles around.

The Jacksonville Aviation Authority manages the area's four airports, including Jacksonville International, which opened in 1968 and is located north of the city. Hotels, motels, and restaurants are available everywhere in Jacksonville to serve visitors to the city and its attractions.

Landmarks

The Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, run by the National Park Service, commemorates the region's first inhabitants, the Timucuan Indians, and includes the site of Port Caroline, the first European settlement on the St. Johns River. An obelisk on the shore marks the settlers' first landing, and a path leads to a model of the fort. Paths and exhibits also highlight the plants and wildlife of the preserve.

The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens commemorates more recent settlers. The Cummers were representative of the wealthy families who built homes along Jacksonville's riverfront in the 1920s. The family's house was demolished to accommodate the museum, which houses their art collection. The garden (recently restored) was created by Mrs. Cummer and pioneer landscape designer Ellen Shipman to accommodate the style of an Italian villa garden to Florida's climate and native plants. Among the art collections inside the museum, most noteworthy are the ceramics, some of which date from 2000 BCE.

Several local landmarks highlight the flora and fauna of northeast Florida. The Museum of Science and History has a collection of living native animals. Turtle Home, in Tree Hill Nature Center, houses the gopher tortoise, a protected species. Its fifty acres also include four nature trails, butterfly and hummingbird gardens, an exhibit on the Florida black bear, and exhibits on local snakes, fossils, and animal skulls.

Local history is enshrined in the Jacksonville Maritime Museum and the Museum of Southern History. The site of Camp Milton, the longest continually occupied Civil War encampment in Florida, may be reached by hiking or bicycle trails, such as the Jacksonville-to-Baldwin Rail Trail. Built and occupied by Confederate forces and later occupied by Union soldiers, it was turned into a historic preserve in the twenty-first century.

Arts venues in downtown Jacksonville include the ornate Florida Theater, erected in 1927, and the Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts, which includes three halls for concerts and plays. The Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra performs here in the largest hall, though it also has a summer concert series outdoors.

History

Jacksonville's recorded history begins in 1562, when French Huguenots led by Jean Ribault, fleeing persecution at home, sailed up the St. Johns River and founded a settlement they called Fort Caroline. However, it was not a safe refuge, since the Spaniards, already in Florida, regarded the French as intruders and heretics. In 1565, troops from the garrison at St. Augustine invaded Fort Caroline, massacred its inhabitants, and left it an empty ruin. Thereafter, the Spanish conquerors ruled all of Florida for nearly two hundred years. Then, in 1763, they handed it to Great Britain in exchange for Havana, which the British had seized from them the previous year.

Making the most of their new possession, the British improved transportation in Florida by constructing a road from Savannah, Georgia, to St. Augustine. Called the King's Road, it crossed the St. Johns River where Port Caroline had been. With a land route crossing a navigable river, it was natural that the site would be settled once more. In 1763, however, the Treaty of Paris provided that Britain return Florida to Spain. Finally, after years of negotiation, the United States took possession of Florida in 1821 and appointed its war hero, General Andrew Jackson, as military governor. American settlers streamed into Florida and named the revived settlement on the St. Johns River for General Jackson.

The port of Jacksonville grew and prospered until 1861, when Florida was among the first states to join the Confederacy. In March 1863, Union troops, with naval support, raided Jacksonville and set fire to much of the city. They returned February 7, 1864, and occupied Jacksonville. Hoping to establish an alternate state government loyal to the Union, they marched inland where, at Olustee on February 20, Confederate forces defeated them in a bloody battle. They marched back to Jacksonville and once again left it in flames as they sailed away.

Peace brought prosperity to Jacksonville, which incorporated as a city in 1867 and thrived as a port of trade until, in the late 1880s, a yellow fever epidemic decimated the population by killing many and causing many more to abandon the city. Jacksonville had scarcely recovered when, in 1901, fire again destroyed most of its commercial center and left nearly nine thousand residents homeless.

With the twentieth century, tourists discovered Jacksonville's pleasant climate, and visitors began arriving by railroad from the north as winter set in. The wealthy and fashionable built winter "cottages" along the river, and Jacksonville became Florida's major city. New industries appeared, not necessarily port-related. In the 1920s, for example, several motion picture studios operated in Jacksonville, which was called "the World's Winter Film Capital." During World War II, the US Navy established bases in Jacksonville and its surroundings. The navy's continued presence remains a force in Jacksonville today.

Several musical genres have thrived in Jacksonville as well. The city was a major jazz and blues hub in the 1920s, and southern rock is said to have originated there in the 1960s and '70s.

Much of the Sugar Hill neighborhood was destroyed in the 1950s and '60s when the federal interstate highway was built and during urban renewal. A shooting sparked a 1969 race riot in the Eastside that ruined a number of African American businesses.

Despite those losses, Jacksonville retained more of its early- to mid-twentieth-century buildings into the next century than most southern cities did. Jacksonville also expanded by taking over nearby communities in 1968, growing to about twenty times its original size. The Friendship Fountain was reportedly the largest and tallest of its kind when it was installed in the mid-1960s, and when the cable-stayed concrete Dames Point Bridge opened in 1989, it was the longest of its kind at the time.

In the early twenty-first century, Florida faced destructive drought, wildfires, and rising seas. Hurricane Irma laid waste to much of Jacksonville in 2017.

Bibliography

Atwood, Mary, and William Weeks. Historic Homes of Florida's First Coast. Charleston: History, 2014. Print.

Bachmann, Andrew, Maria E. Mediavilla, and the Jacksonville Historical Society. Jacksonville Revisited. Charleston: Arcadia, 2007. Print.

Brunson, Laura Jo, and Kendall Brunson. Legendary Locals of Jacksonville. Charleston: Arcadia, 2014. Print.

Davis, Ennis. "The Rich History of Jacksonville—The One You Probably Didn’t Know About." The Florida Times-Union, 17 Dec. 2017, www.jacksonville.com/j-magazine/2017-12-17/rich-history-jacksonville-one-you-probably-didn-t-know-about. Accessed 22 Feb. 2024.

“The Great Jacksonville Fire of 1901." Florida Memory, 2024, www.floridamemory.com/learn/exhibits/photo‗exhibits/jacksonvillefire/#:~:text=The%20Great%20Jacksonville%20Fire%20of,at%20a%20nearby%20mattress%20factory Accessed 22 Feb. 2024.

"Jacksonville City, Florida." QuickFacts, United States Census Bureau, www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/jacksonvillecityflorida/RHI725221. Accessed 22 Feb. 2024.

"Jacksonville Port Authority Prepares for Future of Transportation Logistics." Business Facilities, 7 June 2023, businessfacilities.com/jaxport-prepares-for-future-of-transportation-logistics. Accessed 22 Feb. 2024.

Miller, Blair. Almost Hollywood: The Forgotten Story of Jacksonville, Florida. Lanham: Hamilton, 2013. Print.

Rivers, Larry Eugene. Rebels and Runaways: Slave Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Florida. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2012. Print.