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.
By the late 1800s Jacksonville was the largest city in Florida, a busy river port shipping timber and cotton and a winter resort billed as a "Winter City in a Summer Land." Then came the Great Fire of May 3, 1901 — one of the largest urban fires in American history, which leveled the downtown in eight hours. The rebuild made the city. Klutho's Prairie School towers rose from the ashes, and within a few years Jacksonville reinvented itself again, this time on film.
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.
