World's Finest Beach: A Brief History of the Jacksonville Beaches

Author

Preface

The easternmost part of Jacksonville, Florida, is a barrier island that has a very distinct history as a resort and, later, a bedroom community of a metropolis. Entrepreneurs received taxpayer resources to build a railroad and a settlement on the shore in the 1880s. Almost immediately, an amusement center was built to entertain both day-trippers and summer residents. There was always tension between the amusement or tourism sector on the one hand and those whose livelihoods did not depend on tourists on the other. Commuters to Jacksonville and their families were in the latter group. The amusement or entertainment industry is more tolerant, more willing to look the other way, to allow the risqué or more. For several decades now, the commuter group has clearly won. This book traces the history and dynamics of a tiny resort community in frontier Florida through its development by Metropolitan Jacksonville.

I have loved the beaches (Mayport, Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach, Jacksonville Beach, Ponte Vedra Beach and Palm Valley) since my parents started taking me there to visit relatives or to live at times, but I was too young to appreciate the area’s rich, varied history. The names Ruby Beach and Pablo Beach were known but rarely mentioned. Mayport was a small fishing village with a small naval base. One could drive on the beach from the St. Johns River jetties through Seminole Beach, Manhattan Beach, Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach and Jacksonville Beach to Ponte Vedra Beach until one was in wilderness. Palm Valley seemed wild but actually was a sparsely populated agricultural community. Some of this book concerns events through which I lived but mostly ignored at the time. My professional career concerned Latin American, particularly Mexican, history with sorties into United States history. High school classmates enticed me to visit home in 2000 and to reminisce. As we swapped stories, I began to wonder how and why our home had become what it was. Reading in beaches history was one solution. And I did that—on the Web, in books, in articles and in newspapers. Trips to the beaches were essential.

The history of the Jacksonville beaches is complicated and fascinating, as this virtually unpopulated area grew into villages, small towns and, ultimately, suburbs of the thirteenth largest city in the United States, itself the heart of a major metropolitan area. Mayport village is more oriented to Naval Station Mayport than to the beach communities. Ponte Vedra Beach and Palm Valley are virtually one. Once insular in outlook, the beach communities still maintain a surprising degree of autonomy. Atlantic, Neptune and Jacksonville Beaches fight to preserve independence, and many residents do not understand that they both are and are not succeeding. This book addresses that issue.

Many people and institutions helped make this study possible. Director Deborah Guglielmo and archivist Taryn Rodríguez Boette made the resources of the Beaches Area Historical Society available. Dwight Wilson, archivist emeritus, helped at the beginning. Volunteers Linda Oberdorfer and Phyllis Haeseler kindly scanned images. The Beaches Branch of the Jacksonville Public Library, the instructional Media Center of Duncan U. Fletcher High School and the Florida Collection of the Jacksonville Public Library provided materials unavailable elsewhere. Florida has wonderful Internet resources in the online Florida Heritage project, the online historical resources of the Jacksonville Public Library and the Florida Historical Quarterly, most of which is online. Other online materials are also available as noted in the bibliography. I purchased books, and people sent me written materials.

Other people also helped. Two descendants of Harcourt Bull Sr.—Chelly Bull Schembera and George Ferdie Bull Jr.—gave me access to his business records. Laurie Adams Crowson and Nancy Adams, granddaughters of W.H. Adams Sr., provided materials. It is hard to know where to begin acknowledging the numerous individuals, but they include Harley Henry, Austin Smith, Martin G. Williams Jr., George Hapsis, Hazel Wern Dalton, Diane and Ron Wingate, Harry Flash Hoover, Terry Brant, Tom Ravoo, Leigh Koffman Callahan, Reggie Watterson, Barbara Crawford Williams, Paul Marino, E.J. McDonnel Taylor, Nath Doughtie, Vicky Wright Shattles and so many others that I know I am omitting people.

Toward the end of my research and writing, I was able to ask questions and get answers about the beaches on an alumni listserv. Thanks to all who responded. The late Charlotte Thames, mother of two Fletcher graduates, provided information, insight and inspiration. Younger than me, Suzanne McCormick Taylor—daughter of a former Jacksonville Beach mayor, J.T. McCormick, and the granddaughter of B.B. McCormick, both prime movers in beaches history—had unique information. John W. Wimpy Sutton, a truly great teacher, and his wife, the late Bobbie MacDonell Sutton, gave friendship and information. They also honored me by letting me help with his memoirs and allowing me to use some family photographs. Other beaches denizens, current or past, also helped, including the late Clint Sykes, class of ’43, and Ralph Sistrunk, class of ’41, Fletcher Junior-Senior High School; they provided materials and explanations of life on the beaches before I was born. We talked either face to face or by electronic mail, or both. Fletcher friends corresponded, answering whatever question I might ask. They provided information and friendship and kept me from going down wrong paths. As luck would have it, some of them allowed me to enter their lives again after four decades.

Special thanks to my wife, Paula Crockett Mabry, whose love inspired me and whose patience sustained me. One could not have a more supportive spouse.

Chapter 1

The Setting

The cold, bitter wind swept from the ocean across the World’s Finest Beach westward to the marshes and San Pablo Creek. The nor’easter, as northeast winds were called, was not only cold but also destructive. As the wind whipped the waves into a frenzy, they crashed against the shore, shifting the loose sand. The winds formed or destroyed dunes. Sea oats anchored much of the sands, but they shifted. The coast was altered.

Nor’easters never lasted long—two or three days usually. Most days there was just a breeze. Some mornings, the ocean was smooth as glass with small waves rolling ashore; some evenings, too. Sandpipers scurried across the beach. Sea gulls flew to the beach in the morning and inland to roost at night. The occasional pelican would skim above the water and suddenly dive bomb when it spotted a meal. Porpoise schools would move along the coast, breaking to the surface for air. Underneath the surface and away from the breakers, various fish swam, eating and being eaten. Jellyfish and Portuguese men-of-war lived beyond the breakers, but storms sometimes blew them ashore, where they died.

The surf could be rough in the morning or evening, or all day in rainy weather. When it was, even the marshes and San Pablo Creek might ripple. The creek, a river by most standards, ebbed and flowed with the tide, which changed about every six hours; its mouth was the mighty St. Johns River, itself a tidal river. Birds would take refuge on the marsh.

So much water—the Atlantic Ocean to the east, marshes and the San Pablo Creek to the west, the St. Johns River to the north and marshes, swamps, scrubland and the Tomolato River down to the St. Augustine Inlet to the south. It became a barrier island when a canal was dug in Palm Valley.

It was an island of sand and dirt; of marshes, swamps and dry land; of palmettos, yucca plants, cabbage palms, pine trees and live oaks. Wildlife of all kinds loved it—birds, panthers, rabbits, rats, alligators, crabs, snakes, frogs, squirrels, wolves, deer, fish and others. There were mosquitoes—millions and millions of them—gnats and sand fleas, food for birds but so difficult for humans. The pungency of the marsh would tell people that they were approaching the coast. For those who lived on the beaches, it was the smell of coming home; for those who lived farther inland, it was offensive.

It was hot and humid. Temperatures reached the low nineties in the summer, mitigated by the sea breeze, but they were mild in winter, except on those rare occasions when it dropped below freezing. The rains came, over fifty inches a year, sometimes as early afternoon showers and other times as downpours for a day or more. The climate was subtropical. Until the advent of cheap air conditioning, it was not very pleasant for humans.

Who would want to live there? If any did, they were not many.

Humans first migrated into the region thousands of years ago. The Timucuas, or Timuquas, arrived twelve to sixteen thousand years ago. We have no way of knowing how many people lived in the region before the Europeans started arriving; based on evidence from scholars, one might guess about 14,300.¹ Glenn Emery noted, Downtown Jacksonville was the location of a grand Timucua city called Ossachite. It proved bigger than other communities in the area. Ossachite thrived about 1,000 years ago, but it survived until about 300 years ago.²

The earliest settlers would have found plenty of game and ample fishing spots, so an appreciable number could have lived on or near the island. Europeans reported some people on the northern part of the island, but not many.³ They had emigrated from the Caribbean. James Mooney, in The Catholic Encyclopedia, distinguishes among three groups of people:

The tribes forming the Timucua group proper centred chiefly along the St. John’s River, the principal being the Timucua along the upper part of the river and about the present St. Augustine, whose chief, known to the French as Outina, had his settlement about the present Welaka, and ruled some forty villages, with perhaps 6000 souls. On the lower course of the river were the Satuniba, the enemies of the Timucua and nearly as numerous, and west of them, toward the Suwanee River, were the Potano, with over a thousand warriors or perhaps four thousand souls. Several other tribes were of minor importance.⁴

It seems that many writers use the term Timucua generically. Dr. Jerald T. Milanich says, The Timucuas ruled by Chief Saturiwa lived east of the St. Johns River in Florida and south Georgia.⁵

Europeans and their diseases would destroy the Timucuas. There were not many foreigners at first, but they brought millions of microbes. Europeans did not kill as many Timucuas as did their diseases, to which the natives had no resistance. Not that Europeans wanted to destroy them; to the contrary, they wanted servants, slaves and sexual partners while they sought ways to get rich with as little work as possible.

Huguenots—French Protestants under the leadership of Jean Ribault—sailed into the St. Johns River (the French called it River of May) on May 5, 1562, and established an outpost on an island, calling it Mayport. They met Chief Saturiwa and his people. They exchanged presents (food on the part of the Timucuas). Ribault went back to Europe and was delayed in his return to Florida when he was imprisoned. René Goulaine de Laudonnière brought a large expedition and created Fort Caroline on the south shore of the river and farther west on June 30, 1564.

The Timucuas were helpful to the French until Laudonnière made a treaty with their enemies—Timucuas living west of the river. Then they turned against the French, who stole food and kidnapped a Timucua chief. In addition to Frenchmen brewing up trouble with the locals, Spain was planning to expel the Huguenots. Knowing that Laudonnière was a terrible leader, the French Crown sent Ribault back to Florida, but the French could not hold Fort Caroline. When Pedro Menéndez de Aviles attacked Fort Caroline in August/September 1565, the Saturiwa Timucuas joined him. Aware that the French would have ships guarding the mouth of the river, Menéndez sent troops overland through marshes and scrub to attack from the landside. They and their Timucua allies killed almost 150 settlers. Others escaped. Menéndez renamed the fort San Mateo.

When Ribault tried to attack from south of St. Augustine, Menéndez captured and executed his forces. Menéndez established a fort, Matanzas, to protect the southern approach to the main fort in St. Augustine, the Castillo de San Marcos.⁶

Helping the Spanish expel the French was Pyrrhic, for the Spanish destroyed them. Eventually, disease reduced the Timucua population. Those who survived became more Hispanicized, and many worked for the Spanish around St. Augustine. The Timucuas died out. When the Spanish pulled out of St. Augustine in 1763, they took the last twelve Timacuas with them to Cuba. The very last Timucua, Juan Alonso Cabale, died in 1767, as did Timucua culture. We cannot even trust the drawings of them done by Jacques le Moyne because most that remain were done from memory and then engraved by someone else. Renegades from Georgia—Creeks—slowly migrated into the area, but there were not many of them.⁷

Florida was a backwater of the Spanish empire, held because it was part of the defense system, not because it had precious metals or sedentary populations that could be put to work. It could not support itself. St. Augustine was a naval base designed to protect the Spanish fleet, its population subsidized by a Crown grant, the situado. Other forts, like Matanzas south of St. Augustine, protected the base. Scattered other forts in Florida were similarly defensive. The New World empire was so vast that Spain could not protect all of it, so the Crown concentrated on the most important parts—Mexico, Peru, Cuba—and adopted a defensive strategy