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Carnival on the Boardwalk

By Donald J. Mabry

© 2010

Merry-go-rounds, Ferris wheels, roller coasters, hot

dogs, salt water taffy, beer, games and more! The surf with

the rollers coming in and lapping at your feet! Sand castles.

Ocean bathing in the surf! Suntans and beach blankets.

Come to the boardwalk!

People flocked to the shore for pleasure after the Civil

War ended in 1865. The United States industrialized and

urbanized and city workers wanted an inexpensive place to

escape the rigors of work and the essential boredom of

factory work. Go-getters met this demand by creating

amusement parks, eateries, bars and beer joints, carnival

games, and hotels in such places as Atlantic City (1880) and

Palisades Amusement Park (1898) in New Jersey and Coney

Island in New York. Coney Island influenced the creation of

a smaller version on the shore of present-day Jacksonville,

Florida. This essay, part of my historical series on the east

coast of Duval County, Florida (see list below), studies the

rise and fall of the carnival on the boardwalk of Jacksonville

Beach, Florida. First, a tad of background about east coast

amusement parks is useful.

In Brooklyn in the 1860s, businessmen began

developing the huge amusement complex known as Coney

Island. Coney grew rapidly in the 1880s, about the same

time that Pablo Beach was founded. Being part of the giant

metropolis, New York City, made the growth and prosperity

of Coney Island easy for the resort had millions of potential

customers.

Coney Island was considered the world's largest and

premier amusement area during the first half of the 20th

Century. It was a beach resort that provided carefree

entertainment and thrilling amusement park rides to the

millions of residents that lived in New York City. It featured

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three huge amusement parks; Luna Park, Steeplechase and

Dreamland, and countless other attractions along the

Bowery, Surf Avenue and its numerous side streets.

It would feature luxury hotels, restaurants, bars,

sideshows, bars, games, a steel pier, bath houses, music,

dancing, beauty contests, gambling and prostitutes. The

carnival rides—Ferris wheel, roller coasters (the first was the

Switch Back Railroad in 1884), carousels, and hundreds of

other rides throughout its history. Its success as an

entertainment venue was a direct result of the growth of the

population of New York City through natural increase,

immigration, and annexation, by the development of cheap

transportation, especially the arrival of the subway in 1923

which brought the urban masses, and completion among the

various businesses located there.1

1 Jeffrey Stanton, “Coney Island History Articles.”

http://www.westland.net/coneyisland/histart.htm. the list of rides can be

found at http://www.westland.net/coneyisland/articles/ridelist.htm.

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Figure 1 Boardwalk Carnival ca. 1959 Source: Don Keller

Jacksonville Beach thrived as an entertainment and

carnival-like amusement center for decades before becoming

a bedroom community and part of the City of Jacksonville;

the core of the entertainment district was the boardwalk, a

strip of five blocks along the oceanfront where the city

began in 1885. The boardwalk as an amusement venue

evolved over time but then went into decline in the 1960s

and became something quite different.

Nomenclature changed as people decided to call the

settlement and its streets different names. In 1885, it was

Ruby Beach, named after the daughter of William E. and

Eleanor K. Scull; two years later the Jacksonville & Atlantic

Railroad renamed it Pablo Beach after the river which

separated this barrier island from the mainland to the west.

In 1925, Pablo Beach officials decided to identify more

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closely with Jacksonville, hoping it cash in on its growth and

rising fame. Then, on October 1, 1968, the City of

Jacksonville Beach also became part of the City of

Jacksonville when Duval County and the City of Jacksonville

became one. This confusing political arrangement works but

with problems.

Street names also changed. The founders named

streets, of course, and then town officials named streets

after themselves and after friends when Pablo Beach was

incorporated in 1907. Putnam Avenue became Pablo

Avenue. What is now Beach Boulevard was Duval Avenue,

then Railroad Avenue, and then Mundy Drive. In 1937, in

order to simplify navigation, north-south streets were

numbered as in 1st Street North and 1st Street South. East-

West roads became numbered avenues, north and south

with the exception of Pablo Avenue and the future Beach

Boulevard. Other named streets also exist but are not part of

this story. To help the reader, both names will be given

when necessary.

Fortunately, the Sanborn Map Company created

schematic maps of Pablo Beach for 1903, 1909, 1917, and

1924 for fire insurance purposes. The University of Florida

Digital Map Collection2 serves up these maps at Sanborn

maps for Florida but, unfortunately, uses a presentation

system which does not allow one to download a full map.

Thus, the essay often utilizes snippets. However, the 1903

map, drawn eighteen years after the community was

founded is available. The full image is difficult to read but

one can discern Leon Avenue (now 1st Avenue North),

Putnam Avenue (now Pablo Avenue), Duval Avenue (now

Beach Boulevard), the Ocean View Hotel at the edge of the

beach, the dancing-skating octagonal pavilion (now a

parking lot), and the train depot. The map also shows

existing stores and cottages. The closer up map makes these

details clearer. Photos and postcards help.

2 http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/ufdc/?c=sanborn

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Figure 2 Pablo Beach, 1903 Source: Sanborn Fire Insurance Co.

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Figure 3 Pablo Beach, 1903 Closer Source: Sanborn Fire Insurance Co.

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Figure 4 Postcard View Looking West Source: Andrew Bachman

Figure 5 Pablo Beach Train Depot Source: Andrew Bachman

THE TRAIN

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Pablo Beach and the other beach communities came

into existence because the newly-formed Jacksonville &

Atlantic Railroad Company laid tracks from South

Jacksonville on the banks of the St. Johns River eastward

almost to the ocean. To generate passenger traffic, the

company sold lots in the little settlement of Ruby Beach (and

then Pablo Beach) to whomever could afford summer houses

and to the few permanent resident. Housing was also

provided for railroad workers as well as the people who

worked for others or sold things.

Wealthy people traveled to Jacksonville, arriving by

railroad or steamship from more northerly climes to escape

cold and sometimes inclement weather. Situated near the

mouth of the north-flowing, very large St. Johns River, the

county had over 26,000 people in 1890, not much by

modern standards but, Florida was a frontier state and

Jacksonville its metropolis. When tourists tired of the local

delights, they could take passage up the St. Johns River to

the center of the peninsula, enjoying the beautiful flora and

fauna.

Entrepreneurs decided to extend the reach of this

tourist industry by running a little train of the Jacksonville

and Atlantic Railroad to the ocean east of Jacksonville.

Wealthy people, they hoped, would build summer homes on

the beach and day trippers would sustain railroad

operations. After all, it would only be a forty-five minute trip,

much less than a three-hour boat ride to Mayport.

In October, 1883, a contract was let to build the

Jacksonville and Atlantic Railroad between South Jacksonville

and Pablo Beach. There was ferry service across the St.

Johns between Jacksonville and South Jacksonville. On

November 12, 1884, even before the railroad was

completed, lots were 34 lots sold at Ruby Beach

(Jacksonville Beach) bringing the railroad company $7,514.

In order to maximize profits, the lots were quite small, often

50 feet by 100 feet.3 The railroad tracks were narrow, three-

3 George W. Simons, Jr., Report for Jacksonville Beaches Chamber of

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foot gauge and 35 pound rail. The roadbed and track were

completed in December, 1884.

The railroad allowed people and goods to get to the

ocean shore cheaply and quickly when cars and, later, trucks

were rare or expensive. People in Jacksonville could and did

establish summer residences. “Eagledune,” the L’Engle-

Barnett house built in 1887 was one of a dozen houses

scattered near the railroad terminal. Prominent Jacksonville

men George Wilson, W. A. MacDuff, S. B. Hubbard, P.

McQuaid, J. W. Shoemaker, and others had houses. Tom

Cashen was one of the early residents of Pablo Beach but

built a house on the oceanfront away from the others in

what is now Neptune Beach. General Francis Spinner, former

U.S. Treasurer, lived at Pablo Beach in a tent for about two

years—1885-87—because he said it was good for his health.

Spinner was the father-in-law of Shoemaker, the first cashier

of the First National Bank of Florida. By 1895, Jacksonville

residents had seventy summer cottages there.4

The little railroad became more important when

Henry M. Flagler bought the Jacksonville and Atlantic

Railway Company in 1899 and changed the narrow gauge,

light rail track to standard gauge track with 60-pound rails,

thus making it compatible to the railroads in the country. In

other words, he made the railroad to Pablo Beach part of the

FEC system and the national train network. He extended the

line to Mayport in 1900, and built a railroad bridge across

the St. Johns River between Jacksonville and South

Jacksonville. Moreover, he built a luxury hotel, the

Continental, in Atlantic Beach, opening up that part of the

Commerce, 1944, p.10 comments on the very small lots in Pablo/Jacksonville

Beach. T. Frederick Davis, History of Jacksonville Florida and Vicinity 1513 to

1924 . (Jacksonville, 1925), p. 350, writes of the railroad and real estate.

4 “Ancient History at Beaches Is Recalled As

Landmark Will Be Razed for Modern Buildings,”

Florida Times-Union, 1935; S. Paul Brown, Book of

Jacksonville: A History,(Poughkeepsie, NY: A. V.

Haight, 1895). p. 144.

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beaches at the turn of the century.

Without adequate transportation the Jacksonville

beaches would have remained sand barrens on a barrier

island. People from Jacksonville first had to cross the mighty

St. Johns River by ferry until the bridge was completed in

1921 to South Jacksonville and then sixteen miles across

creeks and swamps until they reached the ocean. Travel on

foot or by a wagon pulled by horse or mule were possible

but not probable. They came and went by train. It chugged

along several times a day carrying passengers and freight to

and from the big city. Its right of way approached within

walking distance of the oceanfront before turning north (at

what became Second Street North) on its way to Atlantic

Beach and then Mayport. Most of the passenger traffic

occurred in the summer, of course, carrying people to enjoy

sun, surf, eats, drink, and the fun and games of the

boardwalk.

BURNSIDE BEACH

Burnside Beach was its potential rival. Located near

Mayport on the south bank of the St. Johns River at its

easternmost point where the river met the Atlantic Ocean,

Burnside could be reached by sea, river, and railroad.

Mayport was an established and important settlement east

of Jacksonville. The arrival of two railroads, the Jacksonville

& Atlantic, and, in May, 1888, the short-lived Jacksonville,

Mayport, and Pablo Railway and Navigation Company (JMP),

seemed to promise a bright future for the little resort.

Nearby Mayport was a thriving settlement with a fine port.

Prior to the railroads, it was a three-hour boat trip to

Mayport, limiting the number of tourists; the railroads

reduced the time and should have brought more people to

Burnside.

Bad luck, undercapitalization, and competition made

Burnside only a stop on its way to and from Mayport on the

route of the Florida East Coast train. The JMP developed a

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bad reputation almost immediately when it got bogged in

sand and passengers had to alight and push. It became

known as the Jump, Man, and Push, a sobriquet that it

never lived down. Arlington, its western terminus, was very

small with bad connections across the river to Jacksonville.

Alexander Wallace, its founder, died in 1889; the JMP went

bankrupt. In March, 1892, the JMP was bought out and its

terminus moved from Arlington to South Jacksonville, but its

financial troubles continued. There was not enough traffic

for two railroads to Mayport and it could not compete with

the Jacksonville and Atlantic Railroad. The hotels, the San

Diego Hotel, the pre-Civil War Burnside House, and the new

4-story Palmetto Hotel were destroyed by fire in 1889 as

was the beach pavilion. Pablo Beach surged ahead with the

backing of the Jacksonville and Atlantic railroad and the

Florida East Coast Railway after Henry M. Flagler bought the

J&A in 1899, modernized it, built a railroad bridge across the

St. Johns River to connect Jacksonville and South

Jacksonville, and built dock facilities at Mayport where he

imported coal for his trains. Worse, for Burnside and

Mayport, he established Atlantic Beach a few miles south

and built the luxury Continental Hotel there to cater to the

wealthy.

Although a paved highway was built from the City of

South Jacksonville to Atlantic Beach in 1910, very few people

had automobiles. Henry Ford figured out how to mass

produce them and pay his workers enough so they could

afford to buy them. In 1910, there were only 468,500

registered cars in the United States for a population of

91,972,266 people or half of one percent of the population.

By 1940, the population had risen 131,954,000, the number

27,465,000 or about 21% of the population owned a car. By

1950, 52% of families owned a car but only 7% owned two

or more. By 1960, 62% did with 15% owning two or more

cars 5 the new highway to the beach made getting there

5 The Statistical History of the United States: From Colonial Times to the

Present. (New York: Basic Books, 1976), 8, 716-17. Burton Parker,

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easier but few people owned cars over a decade later. The

little railroad sped people to the beaches in forty-five

minutes but the mass production of automobiles in the

1920s and their use in the Jacksonville area doomed the FEC

railroad beach branch. The company abandoned it in 1932

during the Great Depression. So the railroad was the key to

development in the pre-automobile age but it had to

generate settlement and traffic.

HOTELS

The Jacksonville and Atlantic Railroad company built a

pavilion at the beach to attract passengers to the beach. The

pavilion had a 64’ by 105’ floor for dancing and roller

skating. The contract with James F. Woodworth called for

the construction to be completed by October 1, 1885 for

$3,980 but work was delayed by heavy rains and difficulty in

getting materials to the site in a timely fashion. Railroaders

were partly to blame but so were suppliers. The workers

were paid $1.25 a day, a decent wage when working men

earned $400 a year on average. The pavilion was finished

November 18th, much later than the contract had specified

and the contractor tried to collect extra money because he

asserted that the J&A had caused the delays by untimely

delivery of materials which cost him more in labor.6

The luxurious Murray Hall Hotel was occupied even

before it opened in 1887. During July 5-10, 1885 it was used

for the encampment of state troops, not long enough to

make a difference. The hotel cost $150,000 and had 192

“Value Of Autos Shown At Garden; Expert Estimates That 350,000 Motor

Cars Are Now in Use in the United States,” New York Times, January 9,

1911, P. 10.

6 October 29, 1885, Florida Times-Union; Jacksonville & A. R. Co. v.

Woodworth. (Supreme Court of Florida. Aug. 18, 1890).

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rooms or a 350-guest capacity. Steam heated the hotel but

it also had 58 open fireplaces, a danger in a wooden building

in a settlement without fire protection. The Hotel generated

electricity for itself and the rest of Pablo Beach. Its artesian

well supplied the city until 1918. For entertainment, it had a

children’s playroom, a billiard room, bar, and an orchestra

for its ballroom. John G. Christopher, a powerhouse

Jacksonville businessman who had pioneered electrical

generating plants in Florida and brought the telephone to

Jacksonville, dreamed of attracting the wealthy in both

summer and winter. One could telephone Jacksonville from

the hotel.

Nevertheless, the hotel was a financial disaster.

Christopher hired C. H. French to manage it; the he and his

wife managed it in 1887 and 1888 before again hiring

someone to try to figure out how to make it profitable.

Figure 6 Murray Hall Hotel, 1988 Source: jacksonvillebeach.org

EARLY POPULATION

Quickly, people and their buildings clustered around

this magnificent structure. In 1887, a directory asserted that

Pablo Beach had one thousand people but listed only 145

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persons. Of these, thirty-three (22.8%) were identified as

African American. The directory lists one baker, two butlers,

a bookkeeper, twenty-nine carpenters, three chambermaids,

two chief cooks, two second cooks, two cooks, three clerks,

a dairyman, fourteen domestics, a drayman for a vegetable

and poultry dealer, a druggist, two grocers who worked at

the James E. Dickerson grocery and dry goods store, a

headwaiter, five hostlers, two janitors , a laborer, three

laundresses, two livery stable employees, two managers, a

nurse, two painters, five porters, a real estate agent, a

railroad section foreman, a servant, a storekeeper, a railroad

superintendent, and three waiters. The “highest ranking”

member of the tiny community was James M. Schumacher,

President of the Jacksonville & Atlantic Railroad and the First

National Bank, but, surely, he resided in Jacksonville and

only had a cottage in Pablo. Eight people, at least, either

worked for the railroad or its bathhouse. Spinner was not

listed in the directory. There were owners—R. M. Call of Call

& Jones, lawyers in Jacksonville, John G. Christopher of the

Murray Hall Hotel, John Clark of John Clark & Son who was a

wholesale and retail grocer as well as a dealer in soap, coal,

champagne, and hotel supplies, W. N. Emery of the Hotel

Pablo, Samuel B. Hubbard of the S. B. Hubbard & Company,

President of the American Illuminating Company, VP of

Jacksonville & Atlantic Railroad, president of the Citizen Gas

Light Company, and other businesses; Thomas McMurray of

McMurray livery stable, and Mrs. Jane R. Mahoney of the

Atlantic Restaurant. Patrick McQuaid was mayor of

Jacksonville and an agent of a firm which sold manure and

grains. Two were two lawyers (one was a notary public; one

was John M. Barrs, Secretary of the Jacksonville & Atlantic

Railroad and law partner of Duncan U. Fletcher, who would

be mayor of Jacksonville, a U.S. Senator, and the namesake

of the Beaches high school in 1937. Most were workers,

however, people living in Pablo Beach to provide services to

the wealthy and to visitors. Most resided there throughout

the year since they could ill afford to own two homes or to

commute. How many resided there year round is not known.

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The name listed might represent a single individual (except

when identified as Miss) or a family. Richard’s says the

population was one thousand, unlikely unless he counted

summer population from cottagers and tourists.7 The U.S.

census in 1890 counted 282 people, 257 in the town.

The Murray Hall and surrounding buildings burned to

the ground as a result of a boiler room fire on August 7th,

1890. Reports attest to the spectacular sight as the middle

of the night fire lit up the sky; the blaze could be seen for

miles. As Dwight Wilson says:

“The building created a fire storm, and the Ocean

View Hotel, a block away, was almost destroyed.

Pryor’s Grocery burned. The railroad station, the

pavilion, the two pagodas, the sheds, some homes,

the wooden bulkhead and a box car were all

destroyed. Sheet metal from the roof fell 600 feet

from the fire. Railroad rails for a hundred feet twisted and

curled.”

John S. Christopher and wife lost $225,000 less the $4,000

insurance but Mrs. Christopher was relieved that the

financial albatross died. The railroad company lost its

pavilion and terminal but fared better, losing only $500 after

its $5,500 insurance policy was paid. The lessee, J. W.

Campbell, owner of the St James Hotel in Jacksonville, lost

little. 8

Besides the Murray Hall, there was the Hotel Pablo on

what is now 2nd Avenue South and 2nd South (then Orange

Street). The hotel was close to the ocean. It was more

7 Richard’s Jacksonville City Directory 1887. Webb’s Jacksonville &

Consolidated Directory, 1887 http://jpl.coj.net/dlc/florida/rbmp/cd/1887/index.html. 8 James C. Craig, “Murray Hall,” Jacksonville Historical Society Papers,

Vol. III, 1954. Dwight Wilson, drawing heavily upon Craig’s work,

provides an account of the attempts to create luxury hotels on the ocean shore. See “The Murray Hall and the Continental: Our World-Famous

Hotels of Yesteryear,” Tidings Vol. 13, no. 1 Winter 1992; “A Jacksonville Hotel Burned,” New York Times, August 8, 1890.

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modest but did a substantial business until it was consumed

by fire.

Figure 7 Hotel Pablo Source: BAHS

EARLY VISITORS TO PABLO BEACH

Summer residents and day trippers shared Pablo

Beach with other visitors. The Florida State Troops camped

at Pablo Beach in 1886 in the troop’s first encampment. “The

summer encampments, each only an average of five to nine

days long, in addition to greatly increased federal aid, seem

to be responsible for the rapid improvement in the

proficiency and skill of Florida’s State Troops after 1891.”9

Lady Howard gushes about the charms of Pablo

9Robert Hawk, “Florida's Militia and State Troops 1865 – 1898,” Florida

Guard Online.

http://www.floridaguard.army.mil/history/army.aspx?id=300&terms=p

ablo+beach.

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Beach when she stopped there on her North American tour

in the late 1890s. Her comments deserve quotation at

length.

After hurriedly breakfasting at a restaurant, G. went

on by train to St. Augustine, whilst I hurried down to

the ferry-boat across the wide Matanzas River—

starting on its further side at once, by the Jacksonville

and Atlantic railroad, to Pablo Beach— one of the

most charming seaside nooks I know. The train runs

across the island, through seventeen miles of the

sunniest and most delightful forest of tall pines, with

a luxuriant undergrowth of palmetto and wild fruit

trees, cleared at rare intervals for plantations of

orange, lemon, fig, and pomegranate— 'wild roses

and flowering creepers abounding.

Within a mile or two of the sea the forest has been

cleared, but the dense and brilliantly-green mass of

palmetto still decks the open space, though which the

train runs to the very edge of the moderate cliff

overhanging the sparkling blue Atlantic ocean, with

magnificent sands, ideal for bathing, stretching away

to right and left into far distance.

These sands are delightful for walking, riding, or

driving—the heaviest wagon makes no mark—and

many are the delicate and lovely shells to be found.

The cliffs are of richly-coloured yellow, pink, and red

sandstone, crowned with the vividly-green palmetto.

I thought it an enchanting spot—at any rate for one

day—and more than one day it is, at present,

impossible to spend there ; for no sooner rises, with

American quickness, a fine hotel, then comes the

incendiary and burns it down. Two hotels which I was

told were worthy to compare with the best had been

burnt, one after another, within the previous year;

and so surely does this happen, not only here but in

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many other resorts, that the insurance companies, in

places where for some reason new hotels seem not to

be desired, decline any longer to effect insurance, the

fire-doom being next to a certainty.

Many of the well-to-do of Jacksonville have charming

villas here, built (as is often the case in America)

several feet above the ground, resting on short

square pillars of brick or stone, the air circulating

freely beneath—a good way of keeping houses dry.

The villas themselves are mostly of wood with wide

verandas covered with gay creepers and plants in

pots, roses twining round the supporting pillars.

These flowery verandas are all over Florida the great

ornament of the houses, and are furnished with

comfortable rocking-chairs, much used by the

dwellers.

I spent a long delightful day here wandering about

revelling in sunshine,, and had an excellent tea at a

charming little cottage, one mass of creepers and

flowers, close to the sea, to which day visitors were

directed; after which, late in the afternoon, the train

returned to the ferry, where I wandered about for

some time amidst charming villas and gardens and

orange groves of great size, grand pines and giant

cypresses with their drapery of Spanish moss, before

re-crossing the ferry into Jacksonville ; whence at 8

p.m. I started by train for St. Augustine, arriving at 10

p.m., and joined G. at the Cordoba Hotel, in the

grand plaza, which is beautifully laid out with lawns,

fountains, and palms, orange and lemon trees, and

beds of dazzling flowers; one whole side occupied by

the huge and magnificent hotel " Ponce de Leon," and

another by the almost equally splendid " Alcazar"—

neither of these yet open for the winter—and other

fine buildings and villas embowered in flowers and

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gardens. In short, nothing of its kind could be finer or

more gay.10

The hotels she mentions were the Murray Hall and the

Pablo.

J. M. Hawks, a medical doctor, visited the area in

1887 and found seventy-five “good-sized buildings and

several hotels.” The railroad would make this a good

summer report, he opined, but he found Mayport, much of

it sitting on dunes, to be a popular watering place with

almost one hundred cottages owned by Jacksonville

businessmen for summer use.11

The 1888 Yellow Fever epidemic in Jacksonville

helped Pablo Beach because it had no cases originate there.

Swamps had been drained and the breezes helped reduce

the mosquito population. Railroad traffic from South

Jacksonville was closely monitored so as to prevent the

spread of the dreaded disease. Roads were improved. The

community developed a reputation as a healthy place to live.

OCEAN VIEW HOTEL

By 1896, the Murray Hall was replaced by the Ocean

View Hotel. It occupied the same spot as the Murray Hall at

the foot of Putnam Avenue [Pablo Avenue]. It had an

adjoining public bath house to serve clients from elsewhere

who needed to rent a bathing suit and a place to change

clothes. This wood frame structure was the very popular

anchor of the boardwalk. W. H. Adams, Sr. acquired it in

1903 and added a billiard room, bowling alley, shooting

gallery, and a drug store. Both the water system and the

10 Winefred , Lady Howard of Glossop, Journal of a tour in the United

States, Canada and Mexico. (London: S. Low, Marston, 1897), pp. 230-

2.

11 J. M. Hawks ,The East Coast of Florida: A Descriptive Narrative (Lynn,

Massachusetts: Lewis & Winship, 1887), p. 53,

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telephone exchange operated from its premises. Until it

burned in 1926, taking much of downtown and parts of the

boardwalk with it, most images of the boardwalk included

it.12 Soon, Adams replaced it with the Ocean View Pavilion

amusement area; the roller coaster would be built there.

Figure 8 Ocean View Hotel Source: Jacksonville Public Library

12 It is not clear when the hotel was built. Bill Foley, “What Next After

Fire? Beaches Parties On,” Florida Times-Union, August 15, 1997, says

that the Ocean View was 30 when it burned in 1926. That would date it

from 1896. Sidney Johnston, The Historic Architectural Resources of the

Beaches Area: A Study of Atlantic Beach, Jacksonville Beach, and

Neptune Beach, Florida. Jacksonville, FL: Environmental Services, Inc.,

July, 2003, p. 52.

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Figure 9 Front Verandah Source: Laurie Adams Crowson

Figure 10 Beach and Ocean View Hotel Source: Laurie Adams Crowson

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Figure 11 Pablo Avenue, Walkway, Pavilion Source: Florida Memory

The Pavilion on the right was built in 1905. A decade

later it would become the core of Little Coney Island, a huge

amusement park covering almost an entire city block. The

two bath houses are connected to the pavilion. In the photo,

the ocean is in the background while the Pablo Beach

business district is on the left. The Ocean View Hotel is in

the distant background, the last structure on the left. The

walkway pralleling Putnam (Pablo) Avenue) ran from

Boulevard (First Street North) to the beach sand. The

photograph was taken about 1909.

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Figure 12 Little Coney Island and Ocean View Hotel Source: BAHS

SPANISH AMERICAN WAR

Before Pablo Beach became a serious amusement

locale, the United States Army used it for a few months in

1898. The Army sent troops to camp at the beach and

established a convalescent Army hospital on August 2, 1898.

The Red Cross had to supply furniture, bed linens,

medicines, and other items to this hospital because the Army

was ill-prepared.13 The photo below shows tents west of the

Pavilion, its bathhouses, and the Ocean View Hotel. The

Third Nebraska Regiment was led by Colonel William

Jennings Bryan (the Democratic Party candidate for

President in 1896, 1900, and 1908). Bryan was sent to Pablo

Beach so he couldn’t participate in the war.

The 2nd New Jersey was encamped there, some of its

members were sick.14 One died in the surf. Most of the

troops never saw action in Cuba. They had been sent to

13 Clara Barton, The Red Cross in Peace and War (American Historical Press,

1898), pp. 461ff.

14 New York Times, September 25, 1898.

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Pablo Beach and Jacksonville to become acclimated to a hot,

humid climate or because they had fallen ill. The Second

Virginia Volunteers found a long rattlesnake with 17 buttons,

indicating that the wild was very close to the beach. They

had little to do.

Figure 13 The 2nd Virginia Volunteers Source: Florida Memory

“On September 9 the men were ordered from Panama

Park [in Jacksonville] to Pablo Beach. It was a

welcome change because it was the location of a

small summer resort. The 3rd Nebraska now pitched

its tents near one of the best beaches in the country.

Of course it proved too good to be true, and the

resort atmosphere came to an abrupt end when Pablo

Beach was graced with the worst storms of the year.

Tents were blown away and a nearby creek [Bontall

Creek] swelled to river proportions with a river-sized

current to match. In this disaster Lieutenant Ohlheiser

was noted for his cool head as he calmly led the men

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out of the waist-deep water to town without a single

soldier lost.”15

Figure 14 Ocean View Hotel and the Pavilion Source: Florida Memory

15 David Ott, “Remember the Maine! Adam County’s Involvement in the

Spanish-American War.

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~neadams/spanish.htm

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Figure 15 2nd Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry Source: H. W. Bolton

Figure 16 Drilling on Pablo Beach Source: Florida Memory

Residents liked having the Army spending money and

providing some excitement to an otherwise humdrum life by

the shore. They lobbied the War Department to extend the

stay of the troops and succeeded.16 This valuable lesson of

16 H. W. Bolton, ed., History of the Second Regiment Illinois Voluntary Infantry

(Chicago: R. R. Donnelley, 1899), pp.328-9.

27

being at least partially dependent on U.S. taxpayer money in

the form of the military was learned; they would follow this

precedent several times until the area became one of the

major US military establishments in the country. Units

present included the 2nd Virginia, 3rd Nebraska, 2nd New

Jersey, and the 49th Iowa, a cross-section of the United

States. The camp closed by November 15th, 1898.

RISE OF TOURISM

By the end of 1898, a wooden walkway (boardwalk)

would be built from the end of Putnam (Pablo) Avenue to

the beach. The photo taken in 1909 or 1910 shows the

wooden walkway to the beach with the Dance Pavilion and

bath houses on the right (south). The street is Putnam

(Pablo; at the end is the Ocean View hotel.

The dunes or hummocks so characteristic of the area

disappeared as men flattened them to erect buildings and

ease access to the beach and ocean. Some businesses, such

as the Ocean View Hotel, provided a walkway so its guests

could sit and watch the seaside sights or walk along. Not

many years passed until a boardwalk was built in front of

oceanfront businesses. By the 1920s, not only was there a

boardwalk but also wooden platforms that hosted rides in

some places.

Figure 17 Beach scene with boardwalk, 1920s. Source: Coveman

28

Figure 18 Pablo Beach Restaurant, 1910 Source: Mabry Archive

Some of the entertainment in the little resort village

was clandestine; prostitution existed in Pablo Beach near the

boardwalk as early as 1904 when Cora Crane ran a brothel. .

Ralph Emery of The Jacksonville Story17 Web site told the

following story:

17Glenn Emery, “Cora Crane’s Palmetto House,” The Jacksonville Story,

http://tinyurl.com/no923n.

29

Yesteryear's beachgoers didn't show much skin at

Pablo Beach (Jacksonville Beach). This postcard

dates from around 1910. The people in it evinced a

modesty that probably wasn't present in Palmetto

Lodge, an oceanfront bordello. The Lodge functioned

as the Pablo branch of the Court, Cora Crane's house

of ill repute in Jacksonville. The proprietress built the

surfside brothel in August 1905, and it stayed in

business for three years. Patrons partook of its

offerings within a roomy, two-story frame house with

wide screened porches. Cora split her time between

an apartment at the Court and one at the branch.

She eventually died at the Lodge.

When on the beach in public, Cora dressed like many

of the other women in long black stockings and skirts

below the knees. In fact, she displayed even less

skin. The madam kept each arm covered with a scarf

tied around it, and she donned a wide shade hat

secured under her chin by an elastic band.

The jetties proved a favorite haunt for Cora while

surfside. With a small group of her ladies and their

young boyfriends, she would picnic and fish for crab,

leaving only when the sun sank low in the sky.

30

Palmetto Lodge sold its services to the more

adventurous beachgoers. When lightning struck the

building on July 20, 1907, no doubt some local

residents saw it as the hand of a vengeful God. Just

two months before at Mayport, Cora's husband

Hammond McNeil had killed a teenager he suspected

of being his wife's lover. And, of course, the

unsavory activity at the Lodge inflamed conservative

townsfolk. Here's how the Florida Times-Union

described the zapping of Cora's establishment:

"STRUCK BY LIGHTNING -- House at Pablo Beach

Badly Damaged Yesterday; Roof, Walls and Ceilings

Demolished; Young Woman Stunned. ~

Passengers arriving from Pablo Beach last night

reported that a house was struck by lightning at that

place during a severe thunderstorm yesterday

afternoon, and was badly damaged.

Those reporting the occurrence said that the house

belonged to Cora Taylor of this city and that it is a

large, two-story house situated north of the Ocean

View Hotel.

Lightning struck the roof of the house, tearing away

a large portion of the roof and two corners of the

building; (it) tore out the ceiling and demolished a

large portion of the furniture.

One young woman, whose name was not given, was

reported to have been badly stunned but was

restored to consciousness by Dr. Jackson and Dr.

Denton (spelling?), who were called to attend her,

and was reported as getting along very well at the

time the train left the beach.

So far as known, no other damage was done by the

lightning at the beach."

31

Cora Crane Taylor died September 4, 1910, the Sunday

before Labor Day, at age 46. A generous person, she had

overexerted herself by helping push a car out of the beach

sand. One doubts that prostitution ended with her death but

records about it do not exist.

The village grew into a town and was incorporated as

such in 1907. It was much smaller than it would be in 1925

when it became Jacksonville Beach. It did not include what

would become Neptune Beach in 1931. Pablo had reached

326 residents in 1900 according to the US Census Bureau;

by 1910, it only had 249 in the incorporated area but there

were a few hundred more scattered neat the two limits.

Even by 1925, the Florida State Census only showed 744

inhabitants. Bounded on the east by the ocean, it stretched

west to 10th Street, to the north to Wakulla Avenue [15th

Avenue North] and south to Hillsboro Avenue [15th Avenue

South]. In fact, settlement was confined to a few blocks

near the Ocean View Hotel. African Americans, however,

tended to live southwest of the railroad station in an area

which became known as “The Hill.” African Americans could

only use Manhattan Beach, miles north near the mouth of

the St. Johns and now encapsulated by Kathryn Abby Hanna

Park. They did not work in the family-owned businesses on

the boardwalk. If they did, they were invisible.18

18 Manhattan Beach was provided by Flagler’s Florida East Coast railroad

for its African American workers. The Atlantic Beach Corporation

acquired it from the FEC and then Harcourt Bull took over. Bull leased

land to business people and resisted pressure for years from white to drive blacks away. Eventually, the state bought the land to make it a

state park. Letter of J. H. Payne, Atlantic Beach Corporation to FEC vice president J. P. Beckwith. October 24, 1914. Letter of Harcourt Bull to

Lucy Bunch, June 6, 1917. Letter of Harcourt Bull to David Mayfield, February 17, 1920, turning down an offer to buy the pavilions and promising to keep the beach a resort for African Americans. Harcourt Bull

to Joseph W. Davin letter, November 24, 1932; Rogers & Towers letter to

Harcourt Bull, January 27, 1933. work s Marsha Dean Phelts, An American Beach for African Americans (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1997), 3-8 devotes a few pages to Manhattan Beach and has some good

photos. However, her chronology does not always jibe with my research in original sources.

32

Figure 19 Looking East Source: Andrew Bachman

Pablo entered the automobile age, so to speak, when

a paved road was completed in 1910 from South Jacksonville

to the intersection of Atlantic Beach and the Neptune section

of Pablo Beach at the oceanfront. Today’s Atlantic Boulevard

was a marvel at a time when Florida enjoyed few paved

roads. One still had to drive a few miles south to downtown

Pablo but one could drive there on the beach when the tide

was right. The hard-packed sand was suitable for automobile

racing at low tide when the beach was 600 feet wide. Racing

on the beach started in 1906 and continued through 1911.

The five-mile course from Atlantic Beach to Pablo Beach saw

a new world record established in August, 1911when an “E-

M-F 30” ran the course in 4.20 minutes beating a Chevrolet

which had held the previous record at 4.27.19

19 New York Times, August 9, 1911. Randal L. Hall, “Before NASCAR: the

corporate and civic promotion of automobile racing in the American

South, 1903-1927, “Journal of Southern History, August, 2002.

33

LIFE GUARDS

Playing in the ocean was one of the chief draws of

the resort and on which the boardwalk depended but poor

or careless swimmers could get in trouble from the pounding

waves or riptides. By 1912, a Volunteer Life Savings Corps

was organized. The following incident and its legal

ramifications made the existence of a corps more

imperative.

“The drowning of a young nurse in the summer of

1912 prompted Clarence McDonald, then supervisor

of public recreation for Jacksonville, and Lyman

Haskell, a lifesaving teacher from the YMCA, to

quickly recruit, train and organize young men to

volunteer their time to guard swimmers at the

increasingly popular Pablo Beach.”20

W. H. Adams, owner of the Ocean View, was sued for

$50,000 by the estate of Mary E. Proctor, who had rented a

bathing suit, changed in his bathhouse, and drowned in the

ocean on July 7th, 1912. The court ruled that Adams did not

own the Atlantic Ocean and, thus, was not liable.21 Tourists,

who often did not understand the vagaries of the sea,

needed help. Death by downing discouraged visitors. In

April, 1913, the town of Pablo Beach gave the corps the

building shown below. A year later the American Red Cross

absorbed the Volunteer Corps as part of its Water Safety

Program. It still exists. The Life Guards began using the

now-famous Walters’ Torpedo buoy in 1919 which made it

easier and safer to rescue distressed swimmers.22

20 Maggie FitzRoy, “Lifeguards Going Strong,” Shorelines, Saturday, August 3,

2002. 21 The Southern Reporter, Vol. 66, (St. Paul: West Publishing Company,

1915),p. 990.

22 “Torpedolike Buoy Is Efficient Life-Saver,” Popular Mechanics, Vol. 35,

No. 3 (March, 1921).

34

Figure 20 H. W. Walters Source: Popular Mechanics

35

Figure 21 Life Saving Corps, 1913 Source: Pablo Improvement Co.

The American Red Cross Volunteer Life Saving Corps

station was a concrete, visible reminder that visitors to the

36

beach would be protected. Over the years, different stations

were built to meet the needs of the corps but always in the

same spot. The current station, built in 1946, is a much

photographed beach icon. The Corps, of course, only

protected surf bathers once they hit the water,

Figure 22 Life Guard Station, 1989 Photo: Don Mabry

LITTLE CONEY ISLAND

Prosperity for Pablo Beach depended on enticing

people to come to Pablo Beach and spend so Beach

entrepreneurs mimicked what they saw in New York. Pablo

Beach businessmen had built hotels, bath houses, beer halls,

shooting galleries, and the like. In 1916, the Pablo

Development and Power Company started adding on to the

Pavilion to create Little Coney Island. Situated on the

southwest corner of Pablo Avenue and First Street with a

wooden walkway to the beach, it was the area’s first

37

amusement park. Unfortunately, records of the enterprise

are scarce but we do know the following.

An Englishman, Charles Henry Mann who moved to

Jacksonville in 1883 was the president of the Pablo

Development and Power Company. In1892 at age sixteen,

he began a hide and skin business, the Southern Hide and

Skin Company, and eventually the American Oak and

Leather Training Company. In addition, by 1909, he was

vice-president of Citizens Bank and vice-president of Welaka

Mineral Water Company which was incorporated on

November 15, 1907. D. E. Fletcher23 was president and

H.C.D. Williams was secretary. The mineral water company

attracted people to its “healing mineral waters” upstream

from Jacksonville on the St. Johns River. Governor Napoleon

Broward appointed him to the town council of Pablo Beach

when it was incorporated in 1907. Mann bought a lot of real

estate between 1892 and-1909. A Pablo Beach street was

named for him 24

Charles Henry Mann

Figure 23 Charles Henry Mann Source: Makers of America

23 This may have been Duncan U. Fletcher; there is no D. E. Fletcher in

the Jacksonville city directory in that era. 24 “Charles Henry Mann,” Makers of America: An Historical and Biographical Work by an Able Corps of Writers. By Florida Historical

Society (Jacksonville, Fla.). Published by A. B. Caldwell., 1909., pp. 399-400.

38

Little Coney Island was a large amusement park, a

destination for tourists. The Sanborn Fire Insurance

Company map for 1917 shows Little Coney Island with a

bowling alley, a dance floor, a pool room, concession stands,

stores, and a roller skating rink.25 The 1924 map of the area

around Little Coney Island shows the Life Guard Station

across the street and on the shore, a Pavilion at the eastern

terminus of what is now Beach Boulevard, the Ocean View

Hotel in the upper right hand corner, and City Hall and the

Fire Department on 2nd Street North. Photographs from the

1920s show its existence along with the development of the

boardwalk proper.

25 Johnston, p. 53.

39

Figure 24 Little Coney Island, 1919 Source: Sanborn Fire Insurance Co.

40

Figure 25 Little Coney Island Source: Sanborn Fire Insurance Co.

41

Figure 26 Postcard of Pavilion Source: Jacksonville Public Library

Little Coney Island, massive as it was, aged badly,

being wooden and buffeted by the constant winds of the

ocean. The Beach News & Advertiser reported on January

26, 1924 that it had been condemned. Razing the building

was a protracted affair with a contract let at the end of

March, and being torn down in January, 1925.26

BOARDWALK AND BATH HOUSES

A new entertainment venue but along the oceanfront

was built. By May, 1925, the call for a boardwalk was made

and plans drawn by late September. The City Council balked

against recommendations for the boardwalk and bulkhead 26 “Coney Island Building Condemned,” Beach News & Advertiser,

January 26, 1924; “Contract For Razing Coney Island Building,” Beach

New & Advertiser, March 29, 1924; “Coney Island Building Changes

Hands,” Beach New & Advertiser, January, 24, 1925; and “Coney Island

Building Razed,” Pablo Beach News, January 25, 1926.

42

the following March b, by April, 1927, the boardwalk was

built on one level and was straight.27

Before the boardwalk was a strip along the beach

edge, Mary E. Perkins built a bath house and boarding house

in 1907. That she operated in a male-dominated society

never stopped her. Born in Wisconsin in 1856, she came to

Florida in 1880 with her husband, L. S. Birks. After he died in

1883, she opened a boarding house in Jacksonville to earn

an income. She established her Pablo Beach business in

Pablo Beach in 1907. Before she died on November 19,

1933, she had yielded control of the Perkins Bath House and

Hotel to her daughter Anna Perkins Pursel in 1931. Perkins

started with a two story house facing the ocean where one

could get room and board. Her success meant expanding the

business until it was quite large by 1924. It consisted of

three separate buildings connected by walkways. It was

destroyed by the 1933 boardwalk fire.

Figure 27 Mary E. Perkins Source: John “Wimpy” Sutton

27 Pablo Beach News, May 2, 1925; September 26, 1925; March 15,

1926; and April 11, 1927.

43

Figure 28 Perkins Boarding and Bathhouse Source: John “Wimpy” Sutton

44

Figure 29 Perkins, 1924 Source: Sanborn Fire Insurance Co.

45

Figure 30 Beauty Pageant, 1920s. Source: Florida Memory

Undaunted, Perkins built a new hotel and more

bathhouses. As her great grandson, John “Wimpy” Sutton,

tells the story:

It was to face on the new concrete boardwalk built by

the Works Progress Administration. Below the hotel,

there was space for a restaurant and other forms of

entertainment and, in front of the bath houses, there

were other concessions such as Joe’s Pee Wee Bar

and the shooting gallery. This very popular area on

the oceanfront, between First and Second Avenues

North, would remain part of our family until 1945.28

28 John “Wimpy” Sutton, Papa’s Memoirs. (Jacksonville Beach, FL, privately

printed, 2005).

46

The hotel and bath house were sold to Pete Dickinson, who

owned a large building with his hardware store across the

street; his son Maxwell still owned it in 2009 but had closed

the hotel when national chains better met consumer tastes.

Figure 31 Double View, Perkins Source: Andrew Bachman

Tourists went to Pablo Beach mostly to enjoy the

ocean and its breezes and each other’s company. House

parties were fun for the younger set. Unlike today, their

dress at the beach was similar to what they would wear in

town. Even on the beach getting a suntan was not in the

fashion. These 1917 photos show one house party as well as

its mode of transportation to Pablo Beach. Even though they

were on the sand by the sea, they covered their bodies. The

party may have been in the Hotel Pablo. The porch seems to

be the hotel porch. Even in the 1920s, swim suits were very

modest.

47

Figure 32 House Party, 1917 Source: Mabry Archive

Figure 33 Leaving the house party Source: Mabry Archive

48

Figure 34 Lawrence Gayle and Anna Grant, 1922 Source: Coveman

World War I intervened briefly in 1917-1919 and then

the “Spanish” Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919. Twenty-

eight men, three of whom were African American, out of 357

people at Pablo Beach served. This represented about 40%

of the adult male population. More than this, the number of

tourists declined during the war because of disruption and

also because prices rose rapidly when the US government

began spending lots of money. Jacksonville and Florida in

general, suffered from the ‘Spanish influenza” with

thousands contracting the virus and hundreds dying from it.

“In the fall of 1918, an Ocala, FL man, Mr. Olson, traveled to

Jacksonville, FL for a carpentry job. Jacksonville was

inundated with the flu at the time, and despite a citywide

quarantine and the use of gauze masks, Olson contracted

the flu.” 29 Travel from other states declined as well. Prices

shot up 17.4% in 1917, 18% in 1918, and 14.6% in 1919

29 Mike Leavitt, “Florida State Summit. “Opening Remarks Prepared for

Delivery By the Honorable Mike Leavitt

Secretary of Health and Human Services.” The Great Pandemic of 1918: State

by State. http://www.pandemicflu.gov/index.html.

49

until prices precipitately dropping 10.5% in 1920.30

Pablo Beach gained national fame when military pilots

used the hard-packed sand as an ideal runway for airplanes,

a new phenomenon in the world, as they experimented with

transcontinental flights. On December 22, 1918, Major Albert

D. Smith and three other Army aviators landed on Pablo

Beach in Curtiss JN-4 biplanes. It had taken 18 days from

San Diego. Then, on February 24, 1921, Lt. William Devote

Coney landed at Pablo Beach after making a flight from San

Diego, California in 22 hours, 17 minutes. His return trip

began March 25, but he crashed and died near Cornville,

Louisiana. That same year, Lt James Doolittle left the

Neptune Beach portion of Pablo Beach on a transcontinental

flight to San Diego in 21 hours and 18 minutes.31

The first half of the 1920s was an exciting time for

Pablo Beach. Getting to the beaches became easier on July

1, 1921, when the Jacksonville-St. Johns Bridge (Acosta

Bridge) was opened. Automobiles, trucks, busses, and

pedestrians could cross the St. Johns River without using a

ferry or a train. In 1922, the Town of Pablo Beach became

the City of Pablo Beach. Residents of the Neptune area in

the north considered seceding, however, for they were

separated by several miles of sand dunes of Pablo Beach but

bordered Atlantic Beach which was on the other side of

Atlantic Boulevard.

Pablo Beach became more modern. The Duval County

school board built a new grammar school for whites in 1924,

a school that building served the community for decades.

The Pablo city government started building a new city hall

which was completed in 1926.32 In 1922 and after, the

30 Historical Inflation Rates, 1914-2009,

http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/historical-inflation-rates/. 31 Johnny Woodhouse, “‘Doolittle Took Up Challenge After Coney Died,” Times

to Remember: A Calendar for 2005. The Beaches Leader, 2004; Davis, 279- 282.

32 Davis, 324, 330; Johnston, p. 59; Bill Foley, “Tough Decision: Boxing or

Swimsuits,? “ Florida Times-Union, June 3, 1998; Johnston, pp. 60-62. The

school was Jacksonville Beach Elementary School which was eventually

demolished. What was the elementary school for African-Americans then was

named Jacksonville Beach Elementary School.

50

beaches communities made a big push to increase tourism.

To encourage this ”industry without chimneys,” they paved

the road between Neptune and Jacksonville Beaches, built

seawalls or bulkheads, and installed street lights to

illuminate areas near the strand. They bridged Bontall Creek

in south Jacksonville Beach. They persuaded the Seminole

Auto Bus Company to provide daily service from Jacksonville

to Pablo Beach via Atlantic Boulevard. On March 14, 1923,

Pablo Beach joined the Jacksonville electricity grid.33 When

the amusement-bathhouse-room rental part was built, the

boardwalk, it was higher than the sand and ocean so steps

had to be built to allow people to move between the two.

The reflective properties of the beach sand meant artificial

shade was desirable and accomplished by palm frond or

other material umbrellas on the beach. Because of cars on

the beach, sunbathers had to be protected by posts.

A swim suit competition was staged at the Pablo

Beach pavilion on June 6, 1924. The American Legion Post #

9 sponsored the Delegation of Mermaids at the Revue of

Modes and there were twenty-five women contestants who

were said to be modeling swimsuits. Pathe News was to film

the event. The suits were borrowed from the Mack Sennet

film studio. Pablo Beach mayor Joe Bussey proclaimed the

day “American Legion Day” and perhaps 7,000 came. A local

woman, Mary Gonzalez, won.

Some beach residents fought the post WWI trends,

believing them immoral. It was the age of alcohol

prohibition, 1919-1933) so the law was on their side but this

was the beach where such niceties were often not observed

when family income was at stake. The late Bill Foley told the

wonderful story of the city government banning shimmying,

dancing cheek-to-cheek, possessing or drinking liquor, or

women wearing anything other than a two piece swim suit

with a skirt at least 12 inches long. The police intended to

enforce these laws to save the youth! The 1924 Charter and

Ordinances of the City of Pablo Beach specified a number of

33 Johnston, p. 59;http://www.jea.com/about/history/100years.asp

51

offences against public order which intended to punish such

as prostitution, discharging firearms, gambling, shimmy or

cheek to cheek dancing, or being homeless.34

Horrors abounded in 1922 when Coronel A.R. Stroup

of the U. S. government and Duval County Sheriff R.E.

Merritt and state officials were determined to keep Pablo

Beach “dry” over Labor Day. That September 4th, they

wanted law-abiding citizens to meet them at the Ocean View

Hotel at 10 AM to organize to prevent the consumption of

booze. Working people from Jacksonville planned to

celebrate their holiday at the beach with picnics, games,

playing in the surf, and drinking. “On Shad's pier the ladies

of labor were opening a week's carnival of wholesome

activity, such as a country store and fortune-telling and

raffles and bake sales and other diversions.” After a nice,

“dry” day of family fun, the authorities would clear the beach

for several miles north of the pier so James E. Doolittle could

try again to make the first cross-country flight. He did.35

Besides booze, marathon dancing on Shad’s pier in

1923 flummoxed city officials. Jimmy Trotter, a band leader,

ran the pier and he decided to stage a marathon dance,

promising a thousand dollars in prizes. The last couple

dancing split $400. There was another marathon dance on

the Ortega pier in Jacksonville but no money was involved.

Provisions were made to take care of the dancers as well as

the crowds which watched. In Pablo, the druggist “Doc“

Russell was on hand and he could call upon the American

Red Cross Volunteer Life Saving Corps if need be. In both

cases, the dancing would inevitably slide over into Sunday, a

sin according some religious types and they demanded that

government enforce their religious beliefs. Sheriff Ham

34 Bill Foley. “Millennium Moment: June 2, 1920: Vexing vixen's shimmy

shocks Pablo Beach,” Florida Times-Union (June 2, 1999). Jack Pate,

“It’s the Law!,” in Beaches Area Historical Society archive, dated 1993-

2004.

35 Bill Foley, “Prelude to history at Pablo on a sober Labor Day, 1922,” Florida Times Union (September 2, 1999).

52

Dowling stopped the Ortega marathon at midnight; Mayor

Joe Bussey did in Pablo. Trotter handed out the prize money

on Monday with Herbert Sachs and Patricia Williams taking

the big money for their 100 hours of dancing. 36

The Ku Klux Klan infected Pablo Beach in the 1920s,

threatening anyone who ignored Klan moralism and small

town-rural Protestant values. This terrorist organization

entered Florida on December 22, 1922 through Jacksonville

with its largest Klavern the Stonewall Jackson No. 1 of

Jacksonville and it “joined other Jacksonville civic groups to

protect city beaches from commercial exploitation.”37 Since

Pablo Beach consisted of small family-owned businesses,

this statement is puzzling. Atlantic Beach to the north was

essentially residential. Mayport and Palm Valley would not

have been considered beach communities. What became

Ponte Vedra Beach was then a very small mining settlement

called Mineral City. It had to be directed at the carnival and

honky-tonk character of the boardwalk and adjacent

businesses.

Part of it was simply that the Klan opposed most

Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Asians, Africans, most

Europeans, urban mores, and African-Americans. People,

including the Pablo Beach police chief, who supported the

Roman Catholic New Yorker for U.S. President in 1928, were

threatened by the Klan. 38

Jacksonville had a very large African America

population but Pablo Beach did not so it was not an anti-

black movement at the beach. Instead, it appears to be a

reaction to the growing tourist industry and the atmosphere

it engenders. Bars (illicit during Prohibition), games and

other amusements, hotels, and a desire for pleasure

36 Bill Foley, “Dancing was so big some refused to stop,” Florida Time-Union

(June 15, 1999) found at http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-

online/stories/061699/nef_allfoley.html

37 David Chalmers, “The Ku Klux Klan in the Sunshine State: The 1920's ,”

Florida Historical Quarterly 42:3, 210-216. 38 Michel Oesterreicher, Pioneer Family: Life on Florida's Twentieth-Century

Frontier. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1996. pp. 91-95.

53

offended those who believed that one should only work, go

to church activities, pray, and stay at home. Businessmen

coped, ignored threats, and got on with the business of

earning a living. They continued to improve the boardwalk.

SHAD’S PIER

Charles Shad led the next major development, the

building of a dance pier jutting from the boardwalk. Martin

G. Williams, Sr., a very successful tailor and men’s clothier in

Jacksonville since 1919, invested in the boardwalk after

becoming fascinated with it and the beach. In time, Williams

would be known as the “Father of the Boardwalk.” Shad and

Williams had joined forces in 1917 to acquire the patent

rights to a sprinkler from Hugh Partridge and to renew the

rights in 1919. Together with Charles Hawkins, they worked

to get permission to build the pier. Williams sold his interests

to Shad and the others.

Shad’s Pier opened on June 8, 1922, providing a place

for visitors and residents alike to dance, relax, and fish. It

was inspired by the Steel Pier on Coney Island in Brooklyn

and that is what the Pablo City Council wanted built but the

cost was prohibitive. U.S. Census Bureau figures explain the

economic limitations. Jacksonville only had 91, 558 people.

Duval County had 113,540. Pablo Beach had only 357. Kings

County, New York (Brooklyn) had 2,018,356 and New York

County (Manhattan) had 2,284,103. Coney Island was then

an island in the southwestern part of Kings County but it

was only a nickel subway ride from Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Millions would visit Coney. So the Council reluctantly had to

settle for Shad’s palmetto pilings and wood.

Shad installed a 10-watt generator and strung lights

to light the entire structure, making it visible for miles. There

was little danger that ships or airplanes would mistake what

it was even though it was twenty-five feet wide and four

hundred feet long with a large dance pavilion, La Brisa (the

breeze), almost at the end. Music floated from the pier as

54

James B. Trotter’s dance band or visiting major bands

played on weekends and juke boxes on weekdays. Shad,

however, died in late 1922, so he never knew how much he

had accomplished. Hawkins and Williams assumed control of

the pier.39

The pier was not static. It was “Trotter’s Pier” after

Shad died, but others owned it subsequently. Storms as well

as age meant repairs had to be made. At one point, the

fishing extension was swept away only to be rebuilt. It

burned in 1937 but was rebuilt. Some old timers said there

was a whirlpool at the end of the pier in the 1920s but that

myth was probably just a reflection of the pier’s iconic

presence at Pablo.

The Jacksonville coast did not suffer direct hits from

hurricanes except in 1964 but hurricanes generate peripheral

winds, rain, and sea surges; more dangerous were the

Northeasters which battered the coast for days in the late

Fall and Winter and could arrive one after another. In 1925,

storms damaged the pier and again in 1932. Fire, the

bugaboo of the old beaches, struck in 1938 and 1949. In

the 1938 fire, Charles W. Hawkins of Jacksonville, the

owner, had insurance. E.W. Compton owned the concession

equipment and furnishings which were lost. The pier was

rebuilt. The 1949 damage was not as bad.40

That first pier was integral to the history of the

39 United States. Patent Office, Official Gazette of the United States

Patent Office. Patent Office Published by The Office, 1919. v. 268, pp.

512. #1,322,466; Martin G. Williams, Jr., “Jacksonville Beach

Boardwalk,” typescript sent to Donald J. Mabry. June, 2009. Beach

News, December 16, 1922. Stone & Webster Journal, Vol. 30 (January,

1922) p. 255. Trina Polkey, “Jacksonville Beach Pier,” GAFF

Magazine, 2008.

http://www.gaffmag.net/articles/jacksonville_beach_pier; Jack

Pate, “The Old Pier, “ Tidings, 20 No. 1 (January 1999).

40 “Pier Burned In Less Than An Hour,” Ocean Beach Reporter,

November 4, 1938.

55

boardwalk from 1922 through the 1961 season. Its entrance

was on the boardwalk between 2nd Avenue North and 3rd

Street North but its long profile out in the water made it

hard to miss. Couples in fancy dress danced to the music of

famous bands in until 1950 or so. Advertising signs

decorated its sides. Signs warning bathers to stay 50 feet

away from the pilings (the barnacles were like razors) were

sometimes ignored. Life Guards and other young men would

dive off the fishing extension during storms because the

high waves gave such a good and dangerous ride to the

shore. Beach teenagers hung out and danced on the pier,

often unbeknownst to their parents. Those who fished loved

its projection into the ocean and were willing to pay the

small fee.

Figure 35 1920s Shad’s Pier Source: Florida Memory

56

Figure 36 Dancing at the Beach

Figure 37 “Shad’s Pier” in 1955 Source: Web

57

Figure 38 Ticket Booth to the fishing extension Source: BAHS

The Florida land boom of the first half of the Twenties

contributed to the prosperity of the beaches but so, too, did

Henry Ford by manufacturing and selling cheap automobiles

to the middle classes. Pablo Beach attracted investment

because more people could buy amusement. In the early

1920s, Martin Williams built a large bathhouse complex on

the boardwalk at 3rd Avenue North across from the pier

entrance, operating it during the season. (See below) The

president of the United Amusement Company, on April 16,

1922, proposed two or more riding devices; tented

attractions of an amusement nature; free seats for the

public; and free admissions to Oceanside Park at Pablo

Beach. Further, he offered to fill the plot used to the level of

First Street; to maintain at all times an orderly and credible

amusement park, and to cooperate with the town

government.41

Fires could not destroy the Casa Marina Hotel, started

in 1925 and opened in 1926, for it was built not of wood but

of masonry. Modest in size it would still exist in 2009 but not

so the Ocean View Hotel which burned in 1926. The Ocean

View Hotel and all about it were gone. Fate picked the night

for a $100,000 fire. The Adams bathhouses, ''numerous''

concession stands, King Tut's theater and restaurant, the

41 Letter, President, United Amusement Company, April 16, 1923 to

Mayor of Pablo Beach, BAHS collection.

58

north boardwalk and the 60-room seaside hotel perished in

the debacle.42 The Casa Marina was just north of the

boardwalk, blocks from the fire’s center.

Figure 39 Williams Bath Houses Source: Sanborn Fire Insurance Co.

42 Bill Foley, “Millennium Moment: July 28, 1926” Florida Times-Union,

July 28, 1999.

59

Figure 40 Casa Marina Hotel, 1925 Source: Jacksonville Public Library

ROLLER COASTER

In August, 1926, W. H. Adams, Sr. created the Ocean

View amusement park on the site of his former hotel and

encouraged the construction of a large roller coaster in 1928

in imitation of Coney Island coasters. John Miller of the Miller

& Rose Amusement Company of Milwaukee built the ride. It

was 93-feet high and its trains reached speeds of 50 miles

per hour. It was 3,168 feet long; its two trains with two cars

with the riders arranged 2 across in 3 rows for a total of 12

riders per train. Although it may have seemed longer for

some passengers, it made the circuit in a minute and one-

half, reaching a speed of fifty miles per hour. The coaster

was huge, dominating the skyline where it could be seen for

miles.43

It was vulnerable to storms and had to be repaired

several times. In 1933, Miller sold it to W. H. Adams, Jr.,

who put Lake R. Peddy in charge. By 1949, the wooden

coaster was increasingly unsafe and was dismantled in 1950

to be replaced by the metal, small “Wild Mouse.” Other rides

and amusements were brought into the space. The Coaster

43 Beach News & Advertiser, August 9, 126; Rollercoaster database.

http://www.rcdb.com/id2891.htm

60

Block complex included restaurants, apparel stores, game

parlors, and other amusements.

Figure 41 Late 1920s-1933 Source: BAHS

Figure 42 Storm Damage probably 1929 Source: BAHS

61

Figure 43 The Drop Source: metrojacksonville.com

Figure 44 View in late 1940s Source: BAHS

62

Figure 45 Boardwalk & Pier, 1920s Source: BAHS

Figure 46 The Wild Mouse, 1st Street North (1961) Source: BAHS

63

NEW DEAL

Storms were but one of the many threats to the

boardwalk but merchants could batten down the hatches

with plywood. Fiscal storms battered everyone. The wild,

speculative, real estate and housing bubble of the first half

of the 1920s collapsed by 1926. For Florida, that was the

beginning of the Great Depression. Land and buildings were

sold for back taxes. The Florida East Coast Railway went into

receivership in September, 1931; service to the beaches

ended in 1932, making day trips more difficult for those

without automobiles. Few people owned automobiles. Beach

dwellers were accustomed to meager incomes since most

depended on seasonal work but conditions worsened until

the New Deal began in 1933.

Jacksonville and its beaches became very dependent

on federal spending since 1993 when the New Deal began

and prospered because of it. The liberal New Deal

government of Franklin D. Roosevelt pumped money into

beaches’ infrastructure and spurred a population increase.

Duncan U. Fletcher, liberal Democratic U. S. Senator,

managed to direct U. S. government money to Duval

County, including the beach area. The Works Projects

Administration (WPA) built a concrete seawall and concrete

boardwalk (thus creating a wonderful place to skate when

the tourists had left!). The U.S. government financed most

of the construction costs of Duncan U. Fletcher Junior-Senior

High School in 1936-37, an institution which unified the

white people at all the beaches including those in the St.

Johns County communities of Palm Valley and Ponte Vedra

Beach. The Civilian Conservation Corps and its projects

provided work. In 1940, the Works Progress Administration

completed the concrete sea wall from 16th Avenue South to

37th Avenue South; in 1941, the WPA authorized $170,000

for additional improvements. Governor Dave Sholtz worked

closely with New Deal agencies to garner federal money for

Florida. He established a State Welfare Board, Planning

64

Board and Emergency Relief Administration. As a result,

Jacksonville Beach and Atlantic Beach grew from 1,046

people in 1930 to 5397 in 1940 with the Jacksonville Beach

area leading the way by going from 882 to 3,566 even

though it lost Neptune beach in 1931.

Federal spending and the national debt increased

exponentially in the 1930s through 1945. Herbert Hoover’s

Republican government had increased federal spending from

$3.127 billion to $4.623 billion in 1933, a 47.8% increase.

Roosevelt’s New Deal increased it to $8.858 billion in 1939, a

91.6% increase. Massive federal spending came with World

War II; federal expenditures jumped to $95.184 billion in

1945, the last year of the war! Similarly, in 1929, the

national debt was $16,931,088; in 1933, the national public

debt was $22,538,673, a 33% increase; by 1939, it was

$40,439,532, a 139% increase over 1929 and a 79.4%

increase over 1933. The US borrowed money to fight the

war so the national debt in 1945 was $258,682,187.44 Wars

bring big government.

Federal spending was not the concern of people in

October 1933 when the boardwalk fire occurred. Survival

was. Fire had always been the bête noir of the beaches. The

Ocean View Hotel and neighboring structures had been

consumed only seven years before. This time, however,

following the lead of the Casa Marina Hotel, rebuilding would

be done with concrete. Mary Perkins and Anna Pursel saved

their safe and began rebuilding, contracting with Manuel

Chao, a friend, to do the work. Next door, to the north,

Martin G. Williams lost his oceanfront amusement businesses

but he used his credit to build a new building which

contained Martin’s Grill, a bowling alley, soda fountain, and

luncheonette. W. E. “Monty” Montgomery, Jacksonville

Beach Mayor in 1933-35, took over from his friend Williams

44 The Statistical History of the United States: From Colonial Times to the

Present (NY, Basic Books,1976 ), 1114-1117.

65

to lead the reconstruction effort.45

MARTIN G. WILLIAMS, SR.

Williams, who was Jacksonville Beach mayor in 1929-

33, emerged as the undisputed leader of the boardwalk,

specifically, and the little city’s business class in general. His

story is remarkable. When he arrived at the Beach, there

were about 300 people, no paved streets, and only one or

two sidewalks. He was born on August 22, 1887 in

Maclenny, west of Jacksonville; he and his family moved to

Jacksonville after his father died in 1889. At age 12, he

went to work for the W. R. Grace Company in the daytime

as an office boy and for American Telephone Company at

night in Jacksonville. In 1919, he opened a successful tailor

shop in Jacksonville but spent so much time in Pablo Beach

that he moved there in 1929. Charles Shad was a close

boyhood friend. He decided to build a boardwalk, bath

house, and fishing and amusement pier. He built an arcade

which had been a dance hall leased to Jimmy Trotter, the

orchestra leader. Williams owned an ice company and

various other businesses. Later, he had a miniature golf

course on First Street North.46

45 Montgomery was mayor again in 1937 to 1939, Councilman and

Mayor Pro Tempore from 1943 to 1945; Councilman from 1945 to

1947 and Councilman and Mayor Pro Tempore from 1947 to 1949. His

nephew, Justin Montgomery, would be mayor in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He would be president of the Beaches Chamber of Commerce in

1968. He died in January, 1960. 46 Martin G. Williams, Jr. to the author; The Beaches Leader (March 6,

1969). Williams died on August 20, 1977, a week before his ninetieth birthday.

66

Figure 47 Boardwalk Fire, 1933 Source: BAHS

Figure 48 Boardwalk Fire 1933 Source: BAHS

The devastation was tremendous but the expensive

rebuilding of businesses, the sea wall, the concrete

67

“boardwalk,” and houses generated jobs and sales. People

came to do the work and stayed. New money also brought

visitors from Jacksonville and nearby who wanted a respite

from the daily grind.

Williams understood that the boardwalk and the

beach had to be merchandized through ads, sales,

gimmicks, and free publicity. He owned Martin G. Williams

Tailor Made Suits next to the Florida Theater in downtown

Jacksonville but he worked at night and weekends at his

businesses on the boardwalk from May to September. He

persuaded many of his fellow Jacksonville merchants to let

their employees go to the beach on Thursday afternoons

and beach merchants, including on the boardwalk, to give

them discounts; he promoted these Thursdays via

newspaper ads and flyers. In 1929, he closed the tailor shop

and devoted his time to the beaches.

In cooperation with other boardwalk owners

informally and then through the Boardwalk Association and

Beaches Chamber of Commerce he founded in the 1930s

and early 1940. The group would issue scrip which was

buried in the sand; finders could be redeem it for rides,

games, and food. Bathing beauty contests, started in the

1920s, became common after World War II as sexual mores

changed. In 1946, the “season” was begun with an Opening

Day Parade to draw crowds and to get newspaper coverage.

Whenever possible, officials and groups from other towns,

particular in Georgia, would be invited to participate. He got

the first convention, the Florida State Firemen’s Sixth Annual

convention. to come to Jacksonville Beach by going to the

1930 convention and handing out photos of bathing

beauties; it worked.47

Efforts to attract people to Jacksonville Beach and its

boardwalk not only occurred before and during the summer

season but also at the end as merchants sought to earn a bit

47 “The Leader Salutes: Martin G. Williams, Sr.: Grand Old man of the

Boardwalk, “The Beaches Leader (March 6, 1969). Steve Crosby, “He Was

‘King of the Boardwalk,’” Florida Times-Union, 1977.

68

more before the long eight-month idle period. These

clippings from September, 9, 1935 of the Jacksonville Florida

Times-Union demonstrate the “end of the season” festivities.

The first shows the crowd attending the baby parade

contest; the second the victor of the 6th annual Life Guard

swimming marathon being hoisted by fellow guardsmen;

and the third women in a bathing beauty contest. Their

platform was built perpendicular to the pier.

Figure 49 Closing Day, 1935 Source: Florida Times-Union

69

Figure 50 Boardwalk Looking South Source:

metrojacksonville.com

Figure 51 1936 Boardwalk Looking North Source: metrojacksonville.com

70

Figure 52 Boardwalk Source: metrojacksonville.com

As Martin G. Williams, Jr. remembers “What is vivid in

my mind as a kid (1930-40) were the images of men in

shirts and ties, panama straw hats and ladies wearing

dresses and gloves seated on the Boardwalk benches

enjoying the cool ocean breezes in the evening and the

strollers walking in similar dress.” One can see this formal

style of dress in the photo below.

71

Figure 53 Martin G. Williams Building Source: metrojacksonville.com

The boardwalk and other beach fun places recovered so

much by 1938 that the ministerial alliance of Jacksonville

campaigned against them but to no avail. The beach had

only two sources of income—commuters and tourism—and

was not about impoverish itself because some church people

objected to entertainment establishments. The State of

Florida had legalized horse and dog racing as well as jai alai

after the Depression hit. Other forms of gambling were at

the discretion of the county sheriff. Poker, bingo, slot

machines, roulette wheels and the like on the boardwalk and

nearby bars seemed ordinary. Carl S. Ward, who owned 200

slot machines, filed suit in federal court in the Fall of 1937 in

an effort to get the courts to grant an injunction to stop

sheriffs from seizing slot machines.48 Drinking alcoholic

beverages and dancing at the beach started when the town

was founded. One suspects that adultery and even

prostitution even occurred in some hotels and rented rooms.

After all, the beach was far enough from Jacksonville to

48 “Florida Slot Machine Owner Withdraws Test Case, “St. Petersburg Times,

October 22, 1937. He withdrew the suit, however.

72

afford some privacy.

THE MILITARY RETURNS

Then came the military and war and lots and lots of money.

The Army used Camp Blanding near Jacksonville beginning

in 1939. Florida had been friendly to the New Deal and the

War Department rewarded the state with the Jacksonville

Naval Air Station in 1940 and McDill Air Force Base in 1939.

The Navy passed 10,000-plus pilots and 11,000 air crewman

through JAX NAS during the war. Naval Air Station Cecil Field

came on line in June 1941; by 1943, all Navy pilots went

through Cecil Field before joining either the Atlantic or

Pacific theatre.

To accommodate the visiting service members who

came to enjoy our beaches, a Recreation Camp was

built with the aid of Civil Conservation Corps labor in

Jacksonville Beach on Seventh Avenue North between

Eighth and Ninth streets.

When completed in July 1941, it afforded over 100

shelters on concrete slabs, each with six folding army

cots, where servicemen could be based while on pass

to the beach. Soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 135th

Infantry Division maintained the camp and furnished

patrons for the Beaches.

It then became the Combat Training Camp in 1942 in

Atlantic Beach. Much more important was the selection of

the Mayport Naval Auxiliary Station in 1939 and its

commission in December, 1942. In 1943, the Casa Marina

Hotel was leased to the US government to house immigrant

workers and converted into forty-nine apartments. When the

war ended, the Mayport naval base was deactivated until

1948 when it was revived. In 1951, Mayport NAS was

expanded and the channel deepened. The next year, the

first aircraft carrier berthed in Ribault Bay, the carrier basin

that had been developed. In 1955 the Navy added a master

73

jet runway. The base became more important as the United

States fought the Cold War and hot wars in Korea and

Vietnam. It has become one of the three largest US Navy

bases in the country, covering 3,409 acres and is the third

largest US Navy facility in the continental United States. 49

Billions of dollars were spent to operate these bases.

The military acquired land, bought supplies, provided

housing, and all the other necessities to establish small cities

for its personnel. Besides thousands of sailors, soldiers, and

Marines, the military hired civilians. The presence of the

bases increased the demand for social services such as

schools.

In the 1940s and 1950s, most military personnel were

young males; they wanted fun and the beach specialized in

fun. Relief from military discipline might mean traveling and

they did it. Some had never seen an ocean. Some wanted to

enjoy the beauty and beauties on the beach. The USO

helped with loneliness; so, too, did professionals. This

author remembers the 1950s when the bus from Mayport

discharged its passengers at the terminal on 1st Street North

and 6th Avenue and a “sea of white hats,” headed for hotels

and bath houses to change into civvies or to bars or the

boardwalk or all three. An unusual number of youngish

women arrived the day before. Testosterone worked. Sailor

tourism became a mainstay of the boardwalk.

The war ceased to be an abstraction in April, 1942

when a German submarine sank the SS Gulfamerica off the

Jacksonville Beach coast. Boardwalk lights, including those

of the pier, made the SS Gulfamerica a better target but the

captain of the sub, once he surfaced, saw that firing on the

ship would endanger civilians on show and sailed between

the shore and sea before firing. People could see fire; some

49 “The Military Zone.

http://themilitaryzone.com/bases/mayport_naval_station.html;

“Everyone Pitched in For War Effort, “The Beaches Leader, June 29,

2001

74

tried to rescue survivors. The boardwalk lights dimmed.

Then on June 17, 1942, four German saboteurs landed at

Ponte Vedra Beach in Operation Pastorius. Four others had

landed on Long Island on June 13, 1942. The Florida group

included Edward John Kerling, 33; Herbert Hans Haupt, an

American citizen; Werner Thiel; and Herman Neubauer. They

carried boxes of incendiary devices and bombs and money.

They walked the few miles to downtown Jacksonville Beach

and took the bus to Jacksonville where they had a large

breakfast. Two stayed at the Seminole Hotel; the other two

at the Mayflower Hotel. Kerling and Thiel went to New York

City and were arrested on June 24; Haupt and Neubauer

went to Chicago and were arrested on June 27th. One of the

Long Island party ratted out the Florida group before it had

landed. On August 8, 1942, the Ponte Vedra four were

executed.50

Security measures were taken. Blackouts were

required. Dark curtains on the windows and shaded car

lights and, on the boardwalk, more elaborate means of

hiding light. Barriers were installed at ramps to the beach to

hide car lights. Coast Guard patrols became more active.

Passes were required, even of students. Bus passengers to

Jacksonville had to be inspected. Civilian lookouts were

used.

50Leon O. Prior,” Nazi Invasion of Florida!” Florida Historical Quarterly

49:2 ( October 1970 ),129-140; Stan Cohen and Don DeNevi with

Richard Gay, They Came to Destroy America: The FBI Goes to War

against Nazi Spies and Saboteurs before and during World War II

Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories, 2003; see also Michael Gannon, Florida,

A Short History. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1993, pp. 105-

107.

75

Figure 54 Beach Pass Source: Clint Sykes

City boosters, however, insisted that the growth of

Jacksonville Beach between 1937 and 1942 owed nothing to

wartime spending. Their advertisement in the Beaches

Outlook (Summer, 1944) asserted that the City’s capital and

surplus from $300,000 in 1937 to $1,160,000,000 in 1942,

that private investment had built The Flag, the Bowling

Center, the Baker Bryan Building, the Beach Bank, and the

Sportland Building. The City adopted radio to contact its

police officers, beautified the city park, paved seven miles of

roads and paved two miles of sidewalks, installed sewage

systems, and completed three sea walls. The building total

was one and one-half million dollars.51 True as these

statements were, they ignored the injection of New Deal and

military monies.

The boardwalk survived the war even though its lights 51 BAHS Tidings, Vol. 24, No2,,May 2002

76

had to be dimmed at night. The daytime was no problem, of

course, and tourists could play at night as long as light

emissions towards the sea were controlled. The Flag, owned

by Carl S. Ward and operated by Cecil Summers and Fred

Blas. advertised itself as the South’s Largest Amusement

Center, “Open All Year,” with 14 bowling lanes, billiards,

Bingo, a soda fountain and grill, and games, penny arcade,

pinball machines, and a dance floor (see Figure 36). It was

built between 1937 and 1942 and occupied the city block

between 4th and 5th Avenues North. Originally, Ward had

installed seats for 3,000 for bingo, hoping to earn his

fortune, but had to cut back and install the bowling alley.

Ward was virtually illiterate but could count on his wife to

help. The gambling Club 21, upstairs, was owned by George

MacDonell.

Figure 55 The Flag Source: E. J. MacDonell Taylor

77

The Flag went down in flames. A large part burned on

Tuesday, February 1, 1944 in a fire caused by a short circuit,

but Ward had it rebuilt and open for business the summer of

1944. Then, on Monday, August 17th, it burned completely.

Some say a problem with the neon sign was the cause;

others say it began in the bowling alley. Regardless, Ward

collected the $100,000 insurance. Luckily, the 500 people in

the building escaped without injury and firemen were able to

save neighboring buildings. Some rides were scorched.52

After the Flag burned, W. A. “Buddy” Albury and

Frank Griffin bought the site and installed an amusement

park and the Club 21 was opened further south. This 1948

photo of a bathing beauty contest also shows Club 21 on the

second floor and the sign indicating where the entrance was

can be seen behind the boys on the roof.

52 Billboard, September 1, 1945.

78

Figure 56 Beauty Contest, 1948, With Bobbie MacDonell Source: BAHS

Beauty contests always drew a crowd but so, too, did

motorcycle races, Opening Day Parades, fireworks displays,

and stunts. In the immediate postwar years, amphibian

vehicle (duck) became a popular ride which took people out

into the ocean almost beyond the site of land allowing

passengers to see sea life. Martin G. Williams, Jr. tells of one

famous stunt used to draw crowds to the boardwalk:

One famous 1949 act was Dynamite Jones. He had a

platform out from the Boardwalk. A wire cage

contained a wooden coffin and at 10 p.m. on

Thursday nights Jones would enter with a crash outfit

and helmet. He would climb into the coffin, an

assistant would insert a stick of dynamite into a hole

in the end of the coffin, and light it. When it

exploded, wood and splinters went everywhere in the

wire cage, there was lots of smoke. An assistant

would rush in; at first there was no movement, then

79

finally a hand and arm would come up and they

would assist Jones to his feet; he would wave and

slowly be helped off the platform until the next week.

This was sponsored in August when summer business

slowed and it was at 10 p.m. to keep the crowd at the

Boardwalk.

GAMBLING

Until the crackdown in 1950, gambling was common

on the boardwalk and the beach. Bingo was a popular

gambling pastime. Martin G. Williams had a bingo parlor as

did The Flag and another business. When The Flag

ownership realized that seating 3,000 players was too many,

fourteen bowling lanes were installed in some of the space.

Art Alexander’s mouse game involved betting into which hold

a mouse would go. Martin G. Williams, Jr. said he saw a

man win $500 once. There were three gambling clubs, one

at Club 21 in The Flag. A headquarters for serious gambling

was Kite’s Bar & Grill, owned by Earl and Mary Kite, who ran

a numbers or bolita game. The kingpin of bolita in Florida

was Santo Trafficante, Sr. and then Jr. of Tampa. The Tax

Court of the U.S. penalized the Kites, equal business

partners, for underpayment of taxes in 1943, 1944, 1945,

and 1946 and they appealed. The Fifth Circuit Court of

Appeals ruled against them for each year except 1946 in its

February 4, 1955 decision. “They operated a retail whiskey

business under the name of Kite's Bar, an illegal gambling

operation, an apartment house, a riding stable and a fishing

boat.” The Court ruled that they owed $29,367.94 in back

taxes plus another $ 13,152.50 in penalties for a total of

$42,520.44. The bar was raided on July 1, 1950 as part of a

State Beverage Department push to stop the bolita industry

in Duval County, The Havana Nite Club and Mac’s Bar and

Package Store in Jacksonville were also hit. Bill Foley

reported that “fifty-five persons were arrested and between

80

$30,000 and $50,000 [were] seized.” 53

That was not the end of troubles, for Duval County

Sheriff Rex Sweat, at the urging of Governor Fuller Warren,

closed the games on the boardwalk just before the second

busiest weekend of the season, Labor Day, September 1-4,

1950. The sledgehammer approach threatened the livelihood

of hundreds or more and the fun of thousands. Most of the

games were hardly gambling since one always or almost

always got a prize or required some degree of skill such as

Pull-the String, darts, shooting ranges, throwing a ball at

dolls, and the like. Bingo, if played in hopes of winning a

prize was gambling. So, too, was Art Alexander’s mouse

games where patrons bet on the hole a mouse would dart

into. Betting on cockroach racing was as well. Club 21,

above the mouse game after The Flag burned, was a pool

hall and gambling place; some assert it was a horse parlor.

Herb Shelley, H. A. Prather and Martin G. Williams, president

of the Beaches Chamber of Commerce, appealed to Florida

Attorney General Richard Ervin who ruled that games which

involved some skill in order to win a prize were not gambling

53 Steve Crosby, “He Was ‘King of the Boardwalk,’” Florida Times-Union, 1977. Chauncey Holt, a shady character, said he was sent to the bar to monitor the books and found that Earl Kite was skimming: “Their business was dropping off about $15,000 a week and they figured that Mr. Kite probably had his hand in the till. So we went down there and I stayed there about a month as a book keeper, numbers writer, that sort of thing. And as soon as we found out that, yeah, he was stealing, I moved on.” Holt asserted that Earl Kite was found floating in the surf with a bullet in his brain. “Interview With Chauncey Holt,” http://www.jfkmurdersolved.com/holt1.htm. However, Earl Kite

died in March 1967 at age 70; 217 F.2d 585, 55-1 USTC P 9199. Earl KITE, Petitioner, v. COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE, Respondent. Mary B. KITE, Petitioner, v. COMMISSIONER OR INTERNAL REVENUE, Respondent. No. 14936. United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit. Feb. 4, 1955, found at http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F2/217/217.F2d.585.14936.htm; Bill

Foley, “Bolita just didn't have lottery's Respectability,” Florida Times-Union, July 3, 1999, found at http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/070399/nef_allFoley.html.

81

and could reopen Labor Day weekend was saved, but then

the rain came. Operating a giant amusement park was a

gamble itself.54

THE END BEGINS

The year 1949 was a turning point for the boardwalk

although few realized it at the time. It lost its most

distinctive ride, the roller coaster, which was torn down after

the 1949 season in 1950. The Wild Mouse which eventually

replaced it paled by comparison; small amusement parks

could have one. Any amusement park could have such rides

as Ferris wheels, Tilt-a-Whirl, bumper cars, The Bullet or

Roll-O-Plane (pictured), carousels, and children’s rides, but

Jacksonville Beach’s boardwalk was distinctive because it

had a huge coaster.

54 .Bill Foley, “Beaches bet against law and lose,” Florida Times-Union, August 29, 1999.

82

Figure 57 Bullet or Roll-o-Plane Source: BAHS

the opening of Beach Boulevard in late 1949 changed

the beaches even more profoundly. It was constructed on

the roadbed of the defunct Florida East Coast Railway as a

four-lane, divided highway allowed motorist to speed to

Jacksonville Beach, cutting the travel time between south

Jacksonville to the beach in half. Moreover, it ended at the

ocean once B. B. McCormick extended it from Third Street

North. The American Red Cross Life Saving station was the

north side of the ramp to the beach. Visitors could drive onto

the beach as long as the tide was not high and drive for

miles or park on the sand. Beach Boulevard delivered

customers of the boardwalk to its door.

With a fast, easy means of getting to Jacksonville

Beach, the little city grew as did its neighbors, so much so,

that Third Street had to be widened in less than a decade to

accommodate the increased traffic. The new highway had its

downside as well. More people could commute to jobs in

83

Jacksonville, making them independent upon the

Jacksonville Beach entertainment industry. South

Jacksonville Beach and Ponte Vedra Beach quickly lost their

relative isolation created by the long trip to Jacksonville via

the curvy Atlantic Boulevard. Prudential Insurance Company

management employees who came from New Jersey in 1953

to work in the South Central home office on the south bank

of the St. Johns could live at the beach and work “in town,”

thus importing persons with higher salaries and a different

cultural norm. Within fifteen years, the beaches were

bedroom communities which depended upon commuters for

income rather than laid-back, small, relatively poor places

whose chief livelihood was seasonal and dependent upon

visitors.

For the last decade of the height of its existence (the

fifties) and until the Coaster Block burned down in 1961, the

businesses remained essentially the same although their

owners may not have. The boardwalk, bounded on the west

by 1st Street North, stretched along the oceanfront for

five/six blocks beginning at Pablo Avenue and going north to

the Casa Marina Hotel at Sixth Avenue North.55

The southernmost section between Pablo Avenue and

First Avenue North was the Coaster block (once called the

Ocean View Pavilion since it was the site of the Ocean View

Hotel). Entering from the south, one first came upon

Howards Restaurant followed immediately by the entrance

to Coaster Park and its rides—The Wild Mouse, the Bullet, a

merry-go-round—as well as Ring the Bell and Guess your

Age or Weight. Next were Paul’s Restaurant, Pitch Until You

Win, the Coaster Bath House and Raft rental, Beach Kiddie

Land, Balloon Dart Game, Chinese String Gallery, Shooting

Gallery, and, at the end, The Hitching Post Restaurant,

famous for its “steam burgers, hamburger meat cooked

55 My comments are based on the Polk City Directories for 1948, 1954, 1956,

1958, and 1960. They are available at the Beaches Area Historical Society. In

addition, Martin G. Williams has been very kind in providing me with his

recollections. So, too, have a number of persons I know from Duncan U.

Fletcher Junior-Senior High School.

84

loosely instead of in a patty and with a little pepper added.

On the backside or the First Street North side were shops

and restaurants.

Going north one block, there was another amusement

park and masonry buildings. The amusement park, called

Playland Park, featured a Ferris wheel, Dodgem or bumper

cars, boat ride, Tilt-A-Whirl, and merry-go-round. Next was

Pee-Wee’s Restaurant and Bar where local icon, John

“Wimpy” Sutton worked in the summer as an adolescent; his

great grandmother was Anna Perkins, who founded Perkins

Bath House and Perkins Hotel north of Pee-Wee’s. A gift

shop, Bud’s Cat House ballgame, Bud’s Juice Bar, Cup and

Saucer Restaurant, Martin G. Williams 15’ by 30” Shooting

Gallery, and the Playland Arcade operated by Gus

Leisengang. This “penny arcade” was filled with machines.

Pinball machines lined its north side; the older machines

were priced at a lowly two cents but their tilt triggers were

set to react quickly. One of the most notable machines was

the Gypsy Fortune Teller whom some found scary. One

could shoot a .22 rifle at a target, test one’s ability to endure

an electrical current, discover one’s “love appeal” and other

nonsensical but fun attributes, and other games/devices

typical of such places. To facilitate people putting money

into the machines, there was not only a person in a change

booth at the front but also boys patrolling the arcade with

change aprons and saying “change, here, change.” Prior to

being a game room, it had been Martin’s Grill, then Jimmy

Trotter’s Dance Hall, and the Lucky Game for bingo. Behind

the arcade was Williams’ ice house.

85

Figure 58 Juice Stand Source: BAHS

Crossing Second Avenue North, one entered the pier

block with the Griffin Amusement Park, Tastee Freeze, the

entrance to the pier, Tradewinds Restaurant, Maybelline’s

Gifts, and various games. In 1940, Williams moved Lucky

Game adjacent to Griffin’s Amusement Park. Adjoining on

the north was the Martin G. Williams property, a 2-story

bowling alley building (18 lanes) built in 1939. In 1940 the

end store became the famous Art’s Mouse Game, run by Art

Alexander.

Across Third Avenue North were the Tropical Gift

Shop, a ball game, Dave's Beer Garden, Ski Ball, Williams

Photography, the Pantry Restaurant, White House Rooms,

and Nicks’ Shooting Gallery, and a Salt Water Taffy store.

The famous Mermaid Tavern and restaurant were on 1st

Street and 3rd Avenue.

86

Figure 59 Pantry, 1962 Source: Mike and Vicki Wright

Figure 60 Booths in the Pantry. View to 1st St, N. Source: Wrights

87

Figure 61 Wrights and Employees Working Source: Wrights

Figure 62 Shooting Gallery Source: BAHS

88

Figure 63 Fascination Source: BAHS

Between 4th and 5th, where The Flag had been, Fred

M. “Frenchy” LeGrand operated rides and amusements

rides.56 Buddy’s Bar at 1st Street North and 4th Avenue North,

owned by W. A. Albury provided thirst quenchers. The

Sandpiper Hotel with its bathhouse and pool open to the

public was the northernmost boundary of the boardwalk.

Vendors also sold suntan oil and rented rafts.

56 This colorful character He had begun as a carny in 1925 at age 15

after he left his Detroit, Michigan birthplace. Although the March 9, 1962

boardwalk fire damaged his business, he started over, continued after

Hurricane Dora in 1964, and, when the carnival parts of the boardwalk

disappeared, he continued being active in the field elsewhere in Duval

County. He died August 22, 1993. “Boardwalk Used To Have A Carnival

Flavor,” The Beaches Leader, September 3, 1993.

89

Figure 64 Postcard, Sandpiper Hotel Source: Andrew Bachman

Downtown businesses, besides those of the

boardwalk, served the needs of tourists and residents within

three blocks east and west and six blocks north and south.

First Street North edged the boardwalk on the west and was

a mix of ordinary main street shops and places to have fun.

What made it different from other small towns were the

number of bars, liquor stores, tourist shops, places to rent

rooms, and, of course, a carnival on the beach front.

Businesses at the beach were family-owned; A&P and

Winn-Dixie supermarkets were two exceptions but non-chain

food stores coexisted. A&W Root Beer had a stand on Beach

Boulevard. There were no chain-owned motels, hotels,

rooming houses, apartment complexes, fast food

restaurants, amusement rides, boardwalk amusements, and

bars. Owners not uncommonly lived in the motels, which

might have only six rooms. People rented rooms in their

homes to tourists. Many times the employees were family

members; many children or their friends or schoolmates

worked in the stores. Non-family members were also

employed, of course. Some boardwalk employees were

seasonal, leaving after the rides were stored for the off-

90

season and the stores shuttered. Often those who stayed

made repairs, cast the plaster dolls given as prizes, or found

other employment.

Downtown Jacksonville offered things which could not

be purchased at the beach because they were not in stock

or not priced competitively. A bus ride on Atlantic Boulevard

or, increasingly, an automobile jaunt on either Atlantic or the

much faster Beach Boulevard solved the problem. The new

St Johns River bridges in the early 1950s expedited traffic.

People “dressed” to go to Jacksonville’s downtown for it did

not practice the informality of the beach.

To the white residents of the beaches were insular in

several ways. Their lives were idyllic. New money improved

the infrastructure of schools, roads, water and sewage

system, telephones, and electrical service. More and more

people built or bought houses, stimulating a real estate

boom and the need for more and different businesses. The

small African American population seemed content, unlike

those if other places including Jacksonville. The beaches

communities—Ponte Vedra and Palm Valley in St. Johns

County, Jacksonville Beach, Neptune Beach, and Atlantic

Beach—and the village of Mayport and the adjacent Navy

Base cooperated on most matters, partly because they

shared a common high school. This good will extended to

those just west of the island on San Pablo Road and in the

Isle of Palms subdivision. Social change, be it the advent of

chain stores and motels, shopping centers, much stronger

competition for the Florida tourist dollar, or racial

integration, seemed something that happened to others.

Krystal Hamburgers, the Chattanooga chain, set up

shop on North 3rd Street a few blocks from the high school,

breaching the food bulkhead. A Chattanooga chain founded

in 1932, it had long existed in Jacksonville but its little

square hamburgers served in boxes might satisfy downtown

workers and shoppers but beach adolescents preferred Bill’s

Drive-In and then the Surf Maid. Still Krystal proved that

could survive on the beach. More ominous were the Burger

King and McDonald’s fast food restaurants which opened in

91

southside Jacksonville.

Small family-owned businesses lacked investment

capital. Commonly, they earned enough income to support a

famous modestly but not enough to enable the owners to

build the kinds of tourist facilities Americans began

demanding by the mid-1950s. Americans wanted more

luxury and convenience and wanted it immediately.

The worst part of the boardwalk was the Coaster

block. Its wooden structure needed replacement because it

was becoming a firetrap and seemed seedy. The masonry

structures were in better shape but needed refurbishing. The

hamburger and hot dog stands paled in comparison to fast

food restaurants such as Burger King and McDonald’s which

had made their appearance in south Jacksonville by the mid-

1950s.

In 1960, there were thirty-seven family-owned motels

that belonged to the Beaches Chamber of Commerce, none

of which belonged to a regional or national chain. They

varied in cost and quality. Some had no air conditioning or

inefficient window units added after the fact. Investors who

wanted to build a modern motel or hotel had to decide

whether the millions invested would yield a good return in

the face of such competition. Howard Johnson and the

Holiday Inn had motels in Jacksonville but avoided the beach

for years. As prosperity increased so, too, did consumer

demand for better accommodations. In a short time,

travelers to Jacksonville Beach demanded the upscale,

modern facilities they found elsewhere. The first modern

chain hotel was a Holiday Inn which opened in 1969.57

57 “Holiday Inn Completed,” Beaches Leader, April 3, 1969.

92

93

Figure 65 Beaches Motel Map, 1960 Source: Pat Carlton Sanders

Air conditioning in the 1960s became a “necessity” in

Florida because rising prosperity gave people the means to

cool their homes and cars, stores, and restaurants. The

opening of Regency Square Mall in Arlington in 1967 marked

the beginning of the end for downtown Jacksonville and for

downtown Jacksonville Beach. Shopping in a mall with its

free parking, climate control, wide variety of stores, and

wonderful lighting was easier than paying to park and

trudging in the weather from store to store. So shoppers

quit going downtown. The city centers, both in Jacksonville

and in Jacksonville Beach, became hollow. Cool breezes on

the boardwalk were not as cool as air conditioning. Along

with television broadcasts, it helped kill most outdoor

entertainment including the boardwalk.58

Television also helped destroy the boardwalk as it

revolutionized the entertainment industry. It was free except

for the receiver. It promoted the cultural values that

generated profits for business; TV was, after all, a business

itself. Unlike the movies, TV taught that one should buy and

buy and buy. Television sets became the idols that people

worshipped, almost always having the prominent place in

the home. The commercials were often better than the

programs. They were more important. Commercials

promised that “Article X” would bring love, pain relief,

respect, sexual fulfillment, or happiness or some

combination thereof. As the decades marched relentlessly

on, TV broadcast in living color and received by cheaper and

cheaper sets. To attract viewers, TV taught self-indulgence

and instant gratification, the efficacy of violence, the

supremacy of the U.S., tolerance of divorce and adultery,

and that any and all life's problems could be solved in less

58 “Stay Cool! Air Conditioning America;“ Susanna Robbins,

“Keeping Things Cool: Air-Conditioning in the Modern World,”

OAH Magazine of History, 18 (October, 2003); "Interview with

Marsha Ackerman on Talking History; U.S. Department of

Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Census of Population: 1960,

Vol. 1. Florida (Washington, US Government Printing Office),

1961.

94

than half an hour. Serious, complicated information could be

reduced to a sound bite or two.59

The expansion of the Naval base at Mayport during

the Korean War and then the Vietnam War helped the

beaches economy in general but began moving the tourist

industry away from being family-oriented. Some sailors,

often officers, brought families to live at the beaches but

most sailors were young, single, enlisted men. When an

aircraft carrier came into port with its flotilla, thousands of

these young men got liberty and headed for Jacksonville

Beach and the pleasures it offered. Sailors came from all

over the United States. When on shore leave, they tended to

act the way adolescent and young adult males away from

home commonly acted. Some got inebriated. The Shore

Patrol tried to keep order. Others sought sex.

So, too, did some locals, for the rock ‘n’ roll revolution

had struck full force by the mid-1950s and some adults were

threatened by the music and its sexuality. Although school

and church dances were restrained, those who went to the

pier sometimes danced the “dirty boogie.” Not often but

parents and other community adults tended to associate the

pier with licentiousness. The scene of sailors and/or

adolescents dancing to black music or rock ‘n roll alarmed

some. Gone were the days of ballroom dancing to Tin Pan

Alley tunes.60

Many deplored the condition of downtown

Jacksonville Beach, including the boardwalk, but the road to

redevelopment twisted through issues of what to do about

the Coaster block and the pier, sharp political differences

within the City Council, and fear of change and its costs.

Some people had begun to object to the numerous bars in

the entertainment district centered on 1st Street North and

59 See Bob Garfield, " Top 100 Advertising Campaigns of the

Century; Randall Rothenberg, "The Advertising Century,"

http://adage.com/century/rothenberg.html gives a quick

overview of the power of television advertising. 60 Donald J. Mabry, “Rock ‘n Roll: the Beginnings,” HTA Press, April 30, 2004.

http://historicaltextarchive.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=738. I

worked on the boardwalk and hung out on the pier. The fears were unfounded.

95

neighboring streets even though they were decades old.

Many of the drinkers were young sailors. Downtown

merchants found competing with Jacksonville increasing

difficult when shoppers could speed at 65 miles per hour for

most of the trip. People had to be enticed to the beaches.

Boardwalk merchants, of course, earned their money from

visitors not locals who rejected the tone established by

young people, including sailors; the adults seldom went

there and more and more commuted to Jacksonville to work

and felt little loyalty to the boardwalk. Further complicating

the issues was race, for some city councilmen and prominent

people were strongly opposed to desegregation. So we must

weave in and out to get the story.

By May 1960, city leaders planned to renovate the

oceanfront back to Third Street with a $2.5 million but only

managed to get it passed by a 4-3 vote. The Council had a

long history of contentiousness and tackling the issue of

redevelopment would bring it to the fore. Some thought the

city was doing well without spending money. Some wanted a

civic center. Some thought the boardwalk was in good

shape; others thought it, including the pier, were ratty or

decadent and wanted them gone and said so in September,

1960. The City Council, the Jacksonville Beach Advisory

Planning Board, and the Chamber of Commerce (which

shared some members) wanted downtown to look better, to

be modern, and make other needed civic improvements. In

January, 1961, the Council and Planning Board began

studying a new Master Plan. In February, the city bought the

Beach Bank building and approved plans for a new police

station. May 5, Council nixes former Councilman T. N.

Abood’s plan for redevelopment referendum.61

Fire came to the rescue, forcing the issue of the

boardwalk. City Manager Walter F. Johnson as early as

November, 1959, recommended that the Coast Block be

61 Beach News & Advertiser, July 29, 1960 says the Council took initial

steps on the new jail and planned to use a federal loan to cover costs.

96

condemned. In November, 1960, the City Council said

conditions on the boardwalk were deplorable and demanded

that inspectors go to work. Then, in December, 1960,

Johnson said he would recommend to the city council that

the Coaster block condemned as a fire hazard because of

debris, butane, paint cans, bare wires, and rotted roofs.

This came a week before downtown redevelopment plans

were announced, plans that generated controversy. On

March 9, 1961, most of the wooden Coaster block burned for

three hours, wiping out decades of history in the process.

Frenchy LeGrand suffered heavy losses when his amusement

rides were damaged. At the north end, the shooting gallery

and The Hitching Post restaurant survived with minimal

damage but Councilman Franklin Left wanted them

condemned so the entire block would become available for

development.62

The Jacksonville Beach Advisory Planning Board

unanimously urged the City Council to buy or lease the

property which was owned by W. H. Adams, Jr. but leased

to Adwolf Amusements Corporation owned by the Sam W.

Wolfson, a successful Jacksonville businessman and

philanthropist.

Demolishing the old pier turned out to be a difficult

decision. The city owned the pier as of May 1 and had let

bids to have it destroyed. Stormes and Bryant and

merchants wanted to wait until September so beach would

be open. The Council voted 5-2 in May to continue plans to

demolish it even though Councilmen Bryant and Stormes

and some merchants wanted the city to delay until

September so the demolition process would not interfere

with the tourists enjoying the beach. Demolition would be

expensive and Stormes joked that it should be burned

because it would only take 3 days—one to burn, two to

clean up .When the bids were opened on June 5, the low bid

62 “City manager to recommend that Boardwalk block be condemned,”

Beaches News, November 6, 1959; “Boardwalk Used to Have Carnival

Flavor,” The Beaches Leader, September 3, 1993.

97

by P. L. Burkhalter Company was $16,723. City manager

Walter F. Johnson got the Council to reject all bids asserting

that city crews could do it more cheaply. Later, the Council

decided that Johnson should study the issue further because

demolition would be dangerous.63

In June, pier demolition bids were sent back to the

city manager for further study. July, 1961, the Chamber

wanted a $1,350,000 municipal improvement plan for off-

street parking, a new civic center, a new city hall building to

house all city departments, and a new police headquarters

and jail. It proposed financing the revenue bonds with

cigarette tax rebates. That month, the City Council voted to

have plans drawn but Mayor Ira D. Sams opposed building a

civic center. After municipal elections the new city council in

late October began considering a one million dollar bond

issue but insisted on the construction of a new city hall be

the first priority. By December, 1962, the bond issue of $1.2

million passed and the city could spend 1962 acquiring

property and planning the new city hall. It bought the lot on

the south side of 1st Ave N between 1st and 2nd Streets for

the city hall project and, in March, the oceanfront lot on the

north side of 1st Avenue from the sea wall to 1st Street

North, thus beginning acquisition of the boardwalk.

Wolfson had the ruins cleared but noted that Adwolf

had no plans to make improvements. The City Council

persisted, however, encouraging Wolfson to build a modern,

large motel on the site but Wolfson finally said no in

September, 1962 when he could not get Adams to

subordinate his ownership to Wolfson. The Council was

determined not to let anything stand in its way; in June,

63 Beach News & Advertiser 5-12-1961; Beach News & Advertiser 5-19-

1961; Beach News & Advertiser, June 9, 1961

98

1961, it rejected an application for a walk-up lunch stand in

Coaster block because it wanted to change is usage. Adams

dug his feet and the city threatened to condemn the

property and seize it. Adams won; he received an out-of-

court settlement from the City of $265,000, which included

$15,000 in attorney fees and court costs, in October, 1963.

Subsequently, the entire block was cleared. Obviously, the

owners decided rebuilding was not profitable. 64

The old pier, the dancing-fishing pier between 2nd and

3rd Avenues, came under scrutiny by the City Council

because it was old and a bit rickety. The structure had been

leased to Curtis Amerson for one and one-half years by W.

E. Montgomery, uncle of Mayor Justin C. Montgomery. At

the end of Amerson’s lease, the pier would revert to the city.

Amerson agreed to make repairs within 30 days, including

40-50 pilings, the sewer system, and the electrical system,

facets of the pier that fell into disrepair under the last

lessee, Paul Ward. City manager Buford McRae had had to

close the pier when Ward didn’t fix things. The Beach News

& Advertiser featured three photos of the pier’s

understructure to illustrate damage. The Chamber of

Commerce, who had many boardwalk business owners,

wanted the city to repair the pier and assume the lease of

the present defunct operator, former mayor W. A. “Monty”

Montgomery. Chamber president, Frank A. Griffin, who

owned one of the amusement parks, argued that the pier

could be made operational for two thousand dollars. Others

estimated the cost could go as high as eighteen thousand

dollars. The difficulty was that private enterprise had failed

to modernize, much less maintain, the pier. 65

Then, on Friday, October 13, 1962, one day before

the city council was going to condemn it, the dancing

64 “Boardwalk Used to Have Carnival Flavor,” Beaches Leader, September

3, 1993 says the fire occurred on March 9, 1962. 65 Beach News & Advertiser, August 7, 1959; Beach News and Advertiser,

7-24-1959; Beach News & Advertiser, 8-7-1959

99

pavilion and much of the rest of the pier was consumed by

fire. The fire was fortuitous because the city council had

been discussing the demolition of the pier since May, 1961;

city firemen watched it burn. Nevertheless, it had been fine

for parents’ to host the annual post-Junior-Senior Prom of

Fletcher Junior-Senior High School as late as June 1960.

Figure 66 No Coaster Block nor Pier, 1962 Source: Florida Memory

The demise of the pier and the Coaster Block seemed

to provide an opportunity to modernize the boardwalk. One

proposal was to build a new pier with a waterfront coliseum

between Pablo Avenue and 1st Avenue North, the former

Coaster Block. The Chamber supported the idea since having

a vacant block on Boardwalk was bad for business. By late

November, a little over a month since the pier fire, the City

Council approved a plan to redevelop the Coaster Block,

voted to hire a design firm, and began negotiations to buy

the property from Bill Adams, Jr.66 Life, however, rarely

66 Beach News & Advertiser , November2, 1962; Beach News &

Advertiser , November 9, 1962; and Beach News & Advertiser ,

November 23, 1962.

100

proceeds in a straight line. Nothing could built until the

property was the city’s; disagreements about plans and

costs grew heated; and the issue of fair play among citizens

delayed resolution.

INTEGRATION

The Civil Rights movement finally came to the

beaches although it had been active in Jacksonville where it

had been met by violence. When Rutledge Pearson led

demonstrations in August, 1960 against segregated lunch

counters at the downtown Woolworth's, McCrorys, and Kress

stores. One day, two black youths accidentally knocked a

white woman into a plate glass window. Then on another

day two women got into a fight. On August 27th, hundreds

of Klansmen and other bigots demonstrated in downtown

Jacksonville with the police watching. When some young

African Americans tried to get lunch counter service at the

Grant's store and were refused, they were attacked by the

white demonstrators who used ax handles and other

weapons. They chased the teenagers into a black section of

town but were run out by a black gang. Police intervention

stopped the riot. More "blacks" than "whites" were arrested,

of course.

The city government of Haydon Burns, even though

African-American votes put him in office, was racist. He was

a powerful force in Jacksonville affairs as mayor from 1949-

1965, when he became governor. Burns was a

segregationist so he refused to create a biracial commission

to resolve the issues. He was a determined conservative

mayor of a conservative city. African-Americans threatened

an economic boycott and white businessmen, fearing loss of

profits, agreed to meet with African-American leaders and

work out compromises. Desegregation began. "Green" was a

more powerful color than white and "black."

Jacksonville had a large African American population,

101

potential customers for the boardwalk; it had once been a

majority black city but annexations of suburbs changed that.

In 1960, the city of 372,569 was 26.9% African American

(100,169 persons); the Standard Metropolitan Statistical

Area population was 455,411 was 23.2% African American

(105,843 persons). However, the tradition of racial

segregation meant that Beach business owner did not want

the patronage of a quarter of the population of the county.

This was not a Duval County phenomenon; racial bigotry

was common throughout the United States.

Not many African Americans, either in absolute

numbers or as a percentage of the total population lived on

the beaches and the periodic influx of white tourists, civilian

or military, shrank both numbers. The 1960 Census is

instructive. Of the 12,049 persons living in Jacksonville

Beach, 1,111 (9.2%) were African American; since

Jacksonville provided most of the jobs at the beaches, it is

not surprising. Atlantic Beach, a wealthier community of

3,125 persons, was home to 605 (19.4%) African

Americans. The high percentage surely reflects the legacy of

the fishing and U. S. Naval industries of Mayport, the

Atlantic Beach Hotel, and the Florida East Coast Railway.

Neptune Beach had three African Americans out of a

population of 2,868. probably live-in servants.

The Census also had Division categories. The

Jacksonville Beach Division of Duval County (covering more

than the political boundaries) had 23,823 of whom 2,366

(9.9%) persons were African American. Palm Valley and

Ponte Vedra Beach were small, unincorporated areas of the

Northern St. Johns County Division, an area larger than

these two tiny communities. This Division contained 5,020

persons of whom 391 (7.8%) were African Americans. Ponte

Vedra Beach had been founded as an upper-income, private

settlement and it was exclusive and wealthy. 67

67 U.S. Bureau of Census, Census of Population: 1960 Florida-Volume I

Part 11: Characteristics of the Population.

http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/11085788v1p11_TOC.pdf. Atlantic Beach had a median family income of $ 6,053; the

102

There were so few African Americans at the beaches

and the adults were so well known meant that retaliation for

any efforts to acquire access to the public beaches or to use

the public accommodations of the boardwalk seemed highly

likely. Councilman Moses Stormes, President of the newly-

chartered Organization of American Rights, Inc., Franklin J.

Left, Vice President, and Robert J. Taylor, Secretary

Treasurer, were its officers; the Board of Directors included

Chuck Franks, Chief of the Jacksonville Beach Police, A. W.

Sands, Lieutenant of Police, Robert R. Craig, Sergeant of

Police, Harry E. Burns, architect, James D. Smith, electrician,

and Fred Downs, painter. The OAR sent a scurrilous letter in

the Fall of 1960 saying that integration meant African

Americans (the letter used a different word) would be raping

white girls and other similar comments. It also issue a

membership recruitment flyer (pictured). The members’

position on race and segregation was clear; it was to be

maintained at all costs.

The OAR leaders went too far and most had to

repudiate the letter and resign from the OAR. Left, Franks,

Sands, Craig, and Downs resigned. Burns said he was never

a member and condemned the letter. Taylor admitted that

some of the language was objectionable and then resigned.

Stormes, on the other hand, defended the letter. At a

Council meeting in October, two different citizens rose to

demand that Stormes resign. The Council members ignored

them, perhaps indicating that they were segregationists.68

Jacksonville SMSA, had $4,433; Jacksonville Beach, had $5,077; and Neptune Beach had $ 5,833. 68 Beach News & Advertiser, Friday, September 30, 1960; Beach News

& Advertiser, October 21, 1960. Smith, according to his son Austin, was

not only not a member but a civil rights advocate. His sister, Lillian, had

written Forbidden Fruit.

103

Figure 67 OAR Flyer Source: Austin Smith

104

The views of Stormes and his ilk did not reflect the

views of others or, perhaps, others were practical. In my

research in beaches newspapers, I found nothing about

desegregation. My sense is that the local media cooperated

to keep it from being an issue. The available accounts differ

but the essential facts are the same.

Contemporaries described the events in an oral

history session recorded at the Beaches Area Historical

Society and Museum in Jacksonville Beach in early 2007.

They noted that the integration drove whites away from the

boardwalk but there was no violence. Because of the danger

of retaliation, the 1,111 Jacksonville Beach African

Americans tended not to pioneer. White tourists had come

from north Florida towns as well as Georgia; the Chamber of

Commerce had done everything it could to promote it.

However, they expected a whites-only situation. With the

beach and boardwalk being opened to all, many whites

stayed away. Martin G. Williams, Jr. in a message to the

author in June, 2009 believed that the boardwalk as he

knew was dying in the 1960’s for several reasons. Many

blamed integration in 1961 or 1962, a difficult situation that

Mayor Justin Montgomery handled very well. Busloads of

blacks were brought to the Beach and Boardwalk by the

NAACP. White families stayed away. By 1970, the number

of rides and amusements were sparse because business had

declined. He noted “there was much competition from

Daytona Beach, Myrtle Beach, Panama Beach, other vacation

attractions and travel had gotten much easier. Disney and

the Mouse arrived in Orlando, air conditioned hotels were

common and golf and boating had become very popular.

The family visitors from South Carolina, Georgia and

Alabama were gone.”69

69 Martin G. Williams, Jr. , Jacksonville Beach Boardwalk,” email attachment,

June, 2009.

105

A quite different view emerges from an anonymous

typed document possessed by the Beaches Area Historical

Society, the view that civic leaders were progressive and

quietly took the lead to achieve integration. This six-page

document is unsigned and undated although may have been

written in the late 1960s. It says the true story of what

happened was revealed to a reporter of The Beaches Leader

and that a member of the “black community” wanted it

known. Some fifteen years before this essay was written,

the City Council completed the Carver Recreation Center and

swimming pool and began tackling the problem of

substandard housing in 1955 in the African American section

of town called “the Hill.” It took five years to complete the

application process and begin construction but the City

demonstrated that the government was not just for whites.

They had integrated the city golf course, built 1963, without

incident and it turned a huge profit in 1965.

In 1963, the mayor, W. S. Wilson, the City Council,

and City Manager and other civic leaders such as Justin C.

Montgomery, a former mayor and nephew a former mayor

and city councilman, , decided that the time for change had

come. They did not want the violence they had seen in

Jacksonville or the demonstrations occurring in St Augustine

in 1964 under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

They desegregated the beach or waterfront by quietly

arranging for African American sailors, dressed in civilian

clothes, to drive onto the strand on a busy Saturday

afternoon and go into the surf. Law enforcement officers

were hidden but acted quickly to disperse any hostile

crowds. They would use the tactic of a fait accompli to

desegregate further.

Before the Civil Rights Act of July 4, 1964 was passed

Jacksonville Beach had desegregated its public

accommodations. The Council asked the Chamber of

Commerce to meet with local motel and restaurant owners

and ask them to desegregate; ninety percent complied. On

early June, 1969, the Chamber cooperated to desegregate

106

the bars.70

Desegregation occurred in other important ways.

African American citizens were not allowed at City Council

meetings. Instead, the City Council came to them at the

Carver Center. In the Spring, 1965, at an outdoor ceremony

for Beaches Welcome Day, invited groups were announced,

applauded, and seat on the platform. Then came the group

of African American invitees. They were announced,

vigorously applauded and seated. Then there was the

desegregation of the local high school, Duncan U. Fletcher in

1967. Again, the acceptance of a fait accompli was the

strategy. During the last week of the school year, an African

American student attended and graduated.

We cannot know whether Jacksonville Beach and its

entertainment industry would have changed if national policy

and practice had not changed. Certainly respect for the law

and a more tolerant attitude in a resort community made a

difference. Increasing dependence on the Navy at Mayport

surely did. The armed forces had desegregated decades

before. As the naval base at Mayport grew, its sailors had to

have recreational place.

RELICS

The carnival on the boardwalk continued for a few

more years as the unburned businesses continued to serve

the thousands who flocked to Jacksonville Beach. Dancing,

fishing, and gawking on the pier survived the Coaster block

fire for more than a year but the combined demise marked a

demarcation line in boardwalk history. Frenchy LeGrand

maintained rides until the late 1960s. Hurricane Dora also

damaged what was left of the boardwalk in September,

1964 but did not end it. The Seven Seas Drive-In and other

Boardwalk businesses were damaged. That same year the

1964—Pablo Avenue ramp to the beach was removed. The

Civil Rights movement kept some people away.

The boardwalk and its surrounding businesses failed

70 See Jacksonville Journal, June 12, 1969 for the desegregation of bars.

107

to modernize and appeared shabby to contemporary ideas.

Shiny, colorful plastics dazzled the brain unlike old painted

wood and masonry. Shopping centers and then air

conditioned malls sucked customers away from main street

because they offered more. Better roads made them easily

accessible. That was the opinion of Martin G. Williams, Sr.

The United States had been going through an

economic boom since 1946 Americans sought to overcome

the relative deprivation of the Great Depression and World

War II by buying what they wanted. Money was pumped

into the economy to fight WWII and then the Cold War

encouraged consumer spending. People had more

discretionary income and used it for themselves and the

children of the Baby Boom. They bought TV sets, air

conditioning units or centrally air conditioned homes,

shopped and went to movies and restaurants in air

conditioning. They stayed in air conditioned hotels and

motels. The Interstate Highway system, begun in the 1950s,

gave them faster, safer, and easier access to different

places. They could speed through Jacksonville on I-95,

passing nowhere near the beach, as they sought Daytona

Beach, Orlando, Saint Petersburg, Tampa, Ft. Lauderdale,

and Miami.

Carnival-like entertainment was dying in general.

Coney Island, the prototype, declined and ran into trouble in

1963-64. In 1963, fire destroyed six amusement places;

parts of it. The 1964 season was the worst in 25 years,

partly because the nearby World’s Fair enticed millions to

view its very modern exhibitions and facilities, upping the

ante for amusement venues. Concessionaires blamed other

variables—the influx of African American customers,

weather, gangs, inadequate parking, and unsafe subways,

Steeplechase Park shut its door in September. Over the next

two years, Coney Island’s reputation went into steep

decline.71

71 Coney Island Timeline.

108

CONCLUSIONS

What happened to Coney Island and to the

amusements parks on the Jacksonville Beach boardwalk was

common in the 1960s; people had better opportunities for

amusement when entrepreneurs built prettier, more

sophisticated venues. Disneyland, built in southern California

in 1955, became the standard by which all other amusement

parks would be judged. It was clean, sleek, and appealing.

Its world famous cartoon and movie characters gave it a

cache that no other amusement park could muster. Its sister

Florida park, Disney World south of Orlando, was even more

sophisticated, aided by the fact that the state of Florida gave

almost carte blanche to the company to do what it wanted.

Disney tested his ideas at the World’s Fair in 1964 and

began secretly buying property in Florida that same year. He

would transplant some of the World’s Fair attractions to

Disneyland and Disney World. Other themed amusement

parks were soon built. Tampa’s Busch Gardens opened in

1959 as a free bird sanctuary and hospitality center for

those who visited the Anheuser-Busch brewery. By 1962,

the process of converting it to an African-themed park began

with the creation of the Serengeti Plain. Then, Anheuser-

Busch started charging admission in 1970 in order to support

and expand the park. Six Flags over Texas opened in 1961

in Dallas and subsequent similar parks were opened in

Atlanta and St. Louis.

Were there enough money to be earned by

modernizing the oceanfront carnival in Jacksonville Beach, to

make it a more attractive area which provided both cheap

and moderately-priced entertainment and air conditioning,

the “carnival” would have not only survived but would have

blossomed. However, the cost would have been in the

millions, way beyond the means of the “mom and pop”

entrepreneurs who owned it. So the carnival atrophied until

www.westland.net/coneyisland/articles/1960.htm

109

death.

Jacksonville sped this change in 1968 when it

absorbed all of Duval Country in a complicated governmental

structure which allowed Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach,

Jacksonville Beach, and the west Duval County town of

Baldwin to remain independent municipalities and part of

Jacksonville. This confusing arrangement was invented in

April, 1967 because the beach communities could have been

abolished under a 1934 law that the pro-consolidators were

avoiding because it would mean years of court fights. They

knew that the beach cities were likely to vote against

consolidating Duval County into one government called

Jacksonville. Some prominent beach leaders—Joseph Van

Dyke a Neptune Beach Councilman, Maxwell Dickinson of

Atlantic Beach, Mayor W. S. Wilson of Jacksonville Beach—

were among those opposing consolidation. State

Representative George Stallings and Richard Featheringill,

President of the Duval County Young Republican Club led

much of the anti-consolidation forces at the beaches.

Featheringill headed Citizens for Better Government even

asserted that consolidation would bring dictatorship and

communism. Justin Montgomery led a strong coalition that

spoke repeatedly for the compromise consolidation plan.

They and others had tired of Jacksonville and Duval County

corruption and/or inefficiency so they took the compromise

of being part of Jacksonville (Duval County) and self-

governing municipalities.

When the smoke of battle cleared, the beaches voted

2,173 to 2,003 for consolidation. They also voted 2,548 to

1,534 for retaining their existing governments. That Florida

county governments had some power over the municipalities

in them was nothing new. All of this would have been easier

to understand had Duval County been renamed Jacksonville

instead of keeping both names. Although the Duval County

beach communities kept some autonomy, they could not

compete against the fiscal and personnel resources of

110

Jacksonville. For most purposes, they had been absorbed.72

Jacksonville not beach politicians made the decisions

which influenced beach growth. They had refurbished the 6th

Avenue South pier; they would fund the 5th Avenue North

pier. They funded the social services at the beach including

the beach branch of the public library. Off the barrier island,

they determined where, when, and why roads would be

repaired or built. The roads largely determined settlement

patterns. When the J. Turner Butler Boulevard (FL 202)

multi-lane highway was built in 1997 from US 1 and I-95 to

southern Jacksonville Beach, so many businesses and

housing developments sprang up along the route and in

bordering St. Johns County that it had to be extended a little

more than a decade later. The St. Johns County community

of Ponte Vedra Beach grew rapidly and effectively absorbed

Palm Valley, funneling more prosperous families out of

Jacksonville Beach.

As the old downtown of Jacksonville Beach changed,

the city government tried various schemes to reverse what it

saw as decline. Beautification, park improvements, better

parking, the Flag Pavilion, decorative paving of the

“boardwalk,” and the Sea Walk Pavilion were created.

Nothing worked immediately. The entertainment center

shifted to Town Center where Atlantic and Neptune Beaches

faced each across the eastern terminus of Atlantic

Boulevard.

The boardwalk survived, however, and even acquired

72 Richard Martin, Consolidation: Jacksonville-Duval County;: The

Dynamics of Urban Political Reform. (Jacksonville, Crawford Publishing

Company, 1988) is an account by a Florida Times-Union reporter who

was an ardent supporter of consolidation. James B. Crooks, The

Consolidation Story From Civil Rights To The Jaguars. (Gainesville:

University of Florida Press, 2004) is a more sweeping book without much

detail on consolidation. The Beaches Leader was opposed to

consolidation.

111

a fishing pier in time. After all, people flock to the sun and

surf, play, eat, and spend the night. Driving and parking on

the beach ended in 1979. The concrete bulkhead was

encased in sand and sea oats grown to restore the shore to

a more natural state. The boardwalk itself changed to

accommodate a different, more prosperous clientele. Some

older buildings remained but private enterprise built high rise

hotels and condominiums by the late 20th century. Old-time

residents complained about the view being blocked but could

not stop construction. The boardwalk became more

attractive so a fishing pier reappeared in the 21st century.

The abandonment of the carnival aspect of the

boardwalk began in 1960 when a 1,200 foot fishing pier was

built at 6th Avenue South, then blocks south of the business

district. R.L Williams, owner of the new pier, wanted it to be

much like the old pier with dancing and beer sales. At first,

the City Council balked because it seemed to be replicating

what some thought was undesirable about the old pier. It

agreed later that May to allow the sale of alcoholic

beverages. Lewis Stewart awarded a beer license so he

could have a tavern. 73 After all, such had been sold since the

city had been founded as Ruby Beach. It suffered storm

damage more than once, losing 400 feet to Hurricane Dora

on September 9, 1964, and then collapsed into the ocean

because of the 1999 storm created by Hurricane Floyd. The

City of Jacksonville spent a million dollars on June 16, 2000

to restore the pier and its restaurant. An arsonist destroyed

the Pier Point restaurant at the foot of this pier on June 17,

2002.

73 Beach News & Advertiser, May 6, 1960; Beach News & Advertiser, May 20,

1960.

112

Figure 68 6th Avenue South Pier, 2001 Photo by Don Mabry

Hotels built on the boardwalk encouraged the building

of a 1,300 foot fishing pier at the end of 5th Avenue North,

the northern limit of the old boardwalk. Sturdier than

previous piers, it opened in December, 2004 and instantly

became a favorite of fishermen and strollers. Its length

allowed one to enjoy a panoramic view of downtown

Jacksonville Beach. Pelicans, hoping for a free meal, loiter.

Few, if any, miss a place to dance since dancing declined

precipitously with the advent of rock concerts in the 1960s;

clubs along First Street North meet the demand. Although a

storm damaged some of the flooring which was quickly

replaced, the pier became a beach icon. See the photos

below.

113

Figure 69 2004 Pier. Photo by Don Mabry

Figure 70 Pier Pelican. Photo by Don Mabry

114

Figure 71 Jacksonville Beach from the Pier Photo by Don Mabry

People of all hues and ages flock to Jacksonville

Beach to enjoy its sand, surf, bars, clubs, and boardwalk.

They watch free movies and attend festivals and concerts at

the Seawalk Pavilion by the ocean and see spectacular

fireworks exploding over the ocean. Those who spend the

night do so in comfort and luxury whether at the historic

Casa Marina or the Quality Suites on the old roller coaster

site. Driving on the beach was forbidden in 1979. The

bulkhead is covered with sand so that sea oats and other

natural vegetation can grow, making the shoreline more like

its 1880 status. The concrete boardwalk is now prettified.

Only five buildings from the carnival days remain. At

the southern end, the iconic American Red Cross Volunteer

Life Saving Corps Station (1946) stands guard where a

station has stood since 1913. The Guards still use the Walker

torpedo buoy and the high orange guard stand with its

banner flying, a banner the guard waves to signal for help

before racing to the surf to the rescue. Going north, the

public toilets at the foot of First Avenue North have been

refurbished a bit. The Perkins Bath House and Hotel Building

contains a restaurant and souvenir shop; the hotel and

bathhouse are closed, made redundant by modern facilities

115

and automobiles. The former Playland Arcade, the “penny

arcade” of yesteryear now sells seashells, coral bits, T-shirts,

and beach supplies business. The Casa Marina grandly

anchors the northern boundary. All the rest exist in memory

and photographs.

Figure 72 ARC Life Saving Corps. Photo by Don Mabry

Figure 73 Public Toilets, First Avenue North. Photo by Don Mabry

116

Figure 74 Perkins Bathhouse & Williams Buildings Photo by Don Mabry

Figure 75 Perkins Bathhouse Building, June 2009 Photo: Don Mabry

117

Figure 76 Hotels and Condominiums on the Boardwalk Photo: Don Mabry

The boardwalk of 2009 more closely resembles the

vision of the founders of Pablo Beach in 1885, for it caters to

those who afford to live on the shore in a condominium

either as primary or secondary home or afford a nice hotel

room. The little area serves day trippers as it did in the

beginning but they travel by automobile not train. It exists

for an affluent society with a strong business sector and with

a very large military presence now instead of a small frontier

city that grew into a large metropolitan area.

Why bother? Why spend time, effort, and money on

this micro history, this tiny little area of Jacksonville-Duval

County, Florida? The Jacksonville Beach boardwalk, the

appellation the locals gave the carnival, was never as big or

influential as its New York and New Jersey counterparts.

After all, they served New York City and Philadelphia,

Pennsylvania and their hinterlands not Jacksonville and its

feeder area. Such a history illustrates the larger historical

understanding. Going from the particular to the general is

more accurate than deducing the particular from the

general, the way history is generally written. Besides, it is

fun.

118

__________________________________________

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This sweeping outline would not have been possible

without the aid of many people. Thanks to my wife Paula C.

Mabry, a magnificent person who has been supportive of my

fascination with “home.” Harley Henry, a fellow alum of both

Fletcher High School and Kenyon College and an avid

supporter of beaches history. Without the extraordinarily

valuable Beaches Area Historical Society & Museum studies

such as this could not be done. BAHS deserves more support

than it gets. Dwight Wilson, former archivist, carries so

much beaches history in his head and is willing to share.

Taryn Rodríguez-Boette, archivist, is talented, helpful, and

knowledgeable; I consider her a friend. Austin Smith of

Neptune Beach, Tom Ravoo of Orlando, Paul Marino of

Jacksonville always answered when I called upon them for

help. One family-- E.J. MacDonell Taylor, Bobbie MacDonell

Sutton, John “Wimpy” Sutton, Janet MacDonell, and Anne

MacDonell Reilly—is special; the members gave me insights

unavailable elsewhere. Maxwell Dickinson still owns part of

the boardwalk; he has been a president of BAHS. Martin G.

Williams, Jr. was a prominent beaches leader and the son of

the most important owner on the boardwalk. Leigh Callahan

proofread the manuscript. George Hapsis, historian of the

American Red Cross Volunteer Life Saving Corps, helped

both with the Corps and as a volunteer staff member of

BAHS. My beaches friends of more than half a century--Ron

and Diane Wingate and Hazel Wern Dalton—encouraged me.

Vicki Wright Shattles and Mike Shattles supplied photos of

the family business on the boardwalk, “The Pantry, “and

regaled me with stories. My grandmother and her children

moved to Jacksonville in 1916. My mother was raised there

and went back intermittently until she finally moved to the

area. I went to school in Jacksonville Beach at various times

in elementary school and then six years at Fletcher Junior-

119

Senior High School. Fletcher alumni contributed their

memories to the project. So many people have made this

and my other studies of the beaches possible and fun.

Thanks.

SOURCES

Newspapers

Beaches Leader Beach News Beach News & Advertiser Beach Outlook Ocean Beach Reporter Pablo Beach News Florida Times-Union

Jacksonville Journal

New York Times

Saint Petersburg Times

Tidings

DVDs

“Reminiscence Session,” Oral History DVDs, February 17,

2007 morning and afternoon sessions. Beaches Area

Historical Society archives.

PHOTOS

Andrew Bachman Postcard Collection

Beaches Area Historical Society

H. W. Bolton

Coveman on Flickr

Laurie Adams Crowson

Florida Memory Project

Florida Times-Union

Jacksonville Public Library, Florida Collection

jacksonvillebeach.org

Don Keller

Mabry Archive

120

Makers of America

metrojacksonville.com

Pablo Improvement Company

Popular Mechanics

Sanborn Fire Insurance Company via University of Florida

Patricia Carleton Sanders

Vicki Wright Shattles and Mike Shattles

Austin Smith

Clint Sykes

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BEACHES HISTORY BY DONALD J. MABRY Published by and Hyperlinked to the HTA Press

Book: World's Finest Beach (February, 2006)

Articles

1. A Man and Three Hotels (March 16, 2006) 2. Neptune Beach Before 1931 (October 10, 2006) 3. Harcourt Bull's Atlantic Beach (February 8, 2007) 4. Beaches Veterans in WWI (March 3, 2007) 5. Mighty Mayport (February, 2008) 6. Florida's Napoleon (May 8, 2008) 7. Baseball on the Beach, Sea Birds, 1952-54

(September 24, 2008)