Jacksonville sits at a bend in the St. Johns River, on ground the Timucua people knew long before Europeans arrived. The French built Fort Caroline near the river's mouth in 1564, one of the earliest European settlements in what is now the United States. The British called the low river crossing the Cow Ford. In 1822 the town was platted and named for Andrew Jackson, Florida's first territorial governor, and Florida entered the Union as a state in 1845 — the date the city's alligator emblem still carries.
Today Jacksonville is the largest city by land area in the contiguous United States and home to one of the nation's largest urban park systems — barrier-island beaches, 80,000 acres of parks, and a downtown of Prairie School towers along a north-flowing river. Our retro Jacksonville, FL collection draws on that layered story: the Great Fire and the rebuild, the silent-film years, the alligator and the river, the River City pride that travels with everyone who has ever called it home.
Why People Visit Jacksonville, FL
Jacksonville rewards travelers who like a city that surprises them: Prairie School architecture in the Deep South, a river that flows north to the sea, miles of Atlantic beach, and a deep Navy heritage at Mayport and NAS Jacksonville. It is a lived-in River City, not a postcard — and that is the appeal.
