Our Jacksonville design carries the Florida alligator beneath an arched JACKSONVILLE and the line Florida Territory · Est. 1845, printed in a black, woodcut-style mark. The alligator is old Florida itself — the river-and-swamp country the city grew out of — and the 1845 date marks Florida statehood. It is a River City emblem: not the tourist Florida of postcards, but the lived-in city on the river that runs north.
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.
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.
