Historical Text Archive: Electronic History Resources, online since 1990

The “World’s Finest Beach” was on its way. The newly-named Jacksonville Beach looked to the future with great optimism. After all, the Florida Land Boom was going great guns in 1925. People were buying land, especially in south Florida, as speculators, then flipping it in a few weeks to new buyers, thus paying their initial costs and garnering a profit. Some would then do it again. On a national scale, many people were doing the same thing with the stock market. With so much demand, prices spiraled upwards. Land speculation was a familiar phenomenon in U.S. history; that was how much of the West was settled. As long as there were willing buyers, the land speculation would continue. In 1925, it was upwards and onwards for the Beaches. Not only had Pablo Beach become Jacksonville Beach but Atlantic Beach had also been incorporated.
    Still, not many people lived at the Beaches. In 1925, Jacksonville Beach housed 744 people. The Florida state census classified them as 544 "whites" (73.1%), 187 "blacks" (25.1%), and 13 of “other races” (1.7%). Racial classifications are obviously inaccurate but one wonders what characteristics caused those thirteen people to be classified thusly. Were they Asians? Mayport contained 644 people of whom 430 were "whites" (66.8%). Atlantic Beach was too small to be included within the category of “minor civil divisions of the state census. The area of Palm Valley and what would become Ponte Vedra Beach had once been Duval County but Duval had ceded it to St. Johns Country. In 1925, Palm Valley had 162 residents of whom 117 (72.2%) were "white" and (27.8%) were" black." People in Palm Valley scratched out a living through subsistence farming, hunting, trapping, and fishing. During part of the year they could earn cash by cutting palm fronds to sell, taking them to the Durbin Station on the Florida East Coast Railway west of the Intracoastal Waterway. When the Intracoastal which was finished in 1912, they used it. There was a one-room school. The census data also included the people who lived in Mineral City, the coastal mining community which would become Ponte Vedra Beach. This totals 1550 without Atlantic Beach. If it contained 50 people, the total for the Beaches was 1600.¹
    Jacksonville was booming as well. The Duval County population, most of it in Jacksonville and its suburbs, was 123,481 persons of whom 72, 870 (59%) were "white" and 50,441 (40.1%) were "black" in 1925. In 1930, Jacksonville, by itself, had a population of 129,549 whereas it had 91,558 in 1920, a 41.5% increase! Banks such as The Atlantic National. the Florida National, and the Barnett National as well as others made the city the financial capital of the state. The city had a team in the South Atlantic League of professional baseball since 1904. The city-owned electric system was constantly being extended and upgraded. Skyscrapers adorned downtown. Shipbuilding spurted during WWI; Merrill-Stevens Shipbuilding Corporation, Morey & Thomas, J. M. Murdock Company, etc. The port shipped and received millions of dollars in goods. In 1924, the Ford Motor Company had created an assembly and distribution plant in the city. Tourists both came to the vicinity for vacations or passed through to reach more southern climes. The building of good highways and the designation of a national system in the 1920s helped. Trucks became important. A building boom meant new subdivisions such as San Marco, Lake Shore, San Jose Estates, and Lake Forest were being built. Millions were being spent.²   Prohibition of alcoholic beverages brought large profits to those in the county who smuggled them from Canada and Cuba; bootleggers sold them at large profits as well.
    Given this prosperity, expansionism was characteristic of the mid-1920s. The Casa Marina Hotel in Jacksonville Beach, begun in 1924 and opened in 1925, was innovative for the Beaches because it was not made of wood but stucco. In June, 1925, W. H. Adams, Sr. opened the new Atlantic Beach Hotel, a 50-room stucco hotel. It became a standard of luxury for many years and an icon. An outdoor swimming pool, at 100-by-50 feet swimming pool the largest in the state, was added in 1929. Eventually, the pool would be used by the local high school's swimming teams. In 1928, the Beach roller coaster was built by John Miller of the Miller & Rose Amusement Company of Milwaukee between Pablo Avenue and First Avenue North. The coaster, an icon for the beaches., was a 93-foot structure. The train reached speeds of 50 miles per hour. In 1933, Miller sold it to W. H. Adams, Jr., who put Lake R. Peddy in charge.³ The Coaster Block complex included restaurants, apparel stores, game parlors, and other amusements.

    Not all plans worked out. In 1925, the Jacksonville Beach Development Company was formed to build a $2 million amusement park but nothing was built. That same year, Gabe Lippman purchased half a mile of ocean front between Jacksonville Beach and Atlantic Beach; behind that stretch of land, he owned 2,500 acres, including four miles of frontage acres on the Intracoastal Waterway. Lippman planned to build a town with a golf course, hotel, pier, and yacht basin. To service his development, he built Florida Boulevard from the ocean westwards and northward to intersect with Atlantic Boulevard at Mayport Road. There was so much low-lying land and marshes, that the contractors had to construct a miniature railroad to haul land fill. The road was completed and a celebration held on July 2, 1925 at the ocean front. Few structures had been erected, however. In October, Lippman, who was in the pharmaceutical distribution business, sold the development to Majestic Homes Corporation of St Louis. It planned to create a 25,000 person city. Florida Beach was never developed, however. Majestic Homes defaulted in June, 1926. Only a few homes had been built.⁴
    The second half of the 1920s saw other problems as well. Disaster struck in the very early morning of July 29, 1926 in Jacksonville Beach fire struck businesses downtown. The Ocean View Hotel burned down. The kitchen fire in the two and one-half story, 60-room hotel on the boardwalk, spread throughout the hotel and then attacked neighboring businesses such as King Tut’s Restaurant, the Adams bath house, and various concessions. Had the remnants of the hurricane which passed through the area had come earlier, perhaps the rain would have extinguished the fire. In 1928, a strong storm caused the loss of 200 feet off the end of the Jacksonville Beach pier. The Ku Klux Klan active in the 1920s, reaching a fever pitch in 1928 when the Catholic Alfred E. Smith ran for President. Klansmen believed such nonsense as a Catholic plot to install the Pope as the ruler of the United States or that there was an international Jewish conspiracy or that African Americans were a threat to civilization or some combination thereof. Popular Jacksonville Beach mayor Walter M. Phillips died of an accidental fall on September 7, 1928. In 1917, he had joined Buckman and Pritchard, Inc. which had mined Mineral City until the National Lead Company bought the mining project. When the mining became unprofitable, he became head of development to turn the National Lead property, eleven miles of ocean front property, into a site for a golf course, dog racing, club house, and houses for winter residents. He also worked to get a coastal highway built, A1A, from Jacksonville Beach to St. Augustine, a move successful in 1929. Phillips' death did not stop the project, however.⁵
    Things got worse. The Florida Land Boom died. The dying began in 1925 but the 1926 hurricane in South Florida scared potential buyers. The Florida economy started downward. Building projects were stopped. People lost jobs. Testiness increased.
    Then things got much worse. The stock market boom ended in October, 1929; the market crashed. The crash revealed the weakness of the national economy. Signs of trouble in Jacksonville began emerging in Spring, 1928. Within a year and one half, unemployment would be serious in Duval County. The economy, increasingly based on mass consumption to absorb mass production, was financed on the "never never," credit, the belief that incomes would rise fast enough to pay the bills. Advertisers, Madison Avenue in popular parlance, were successful in convincing large numbers of Americans that they needed what they desired. Income did not rise as fast as demand. The 1920s were a decade when the rich got much richer than the average person so the latter started borrowing and borrowing. Mass consumption necessitates an income distribution that allows consumers to buy. Without the appropriate income distribution, warehouses will burst at their seams and production lines will clog. Racism and ethnic discrimination hurt the economy not only because large numbers of people did not get paid what they deserved but also because talent was denied. As the economy changed from coal to oil and hydroelectric power and natural fibers to synthetics, large economic dislocations occurred. The national government, under Republican Party control, restricted the free market with high tariffs and other subsidies to business. These weaknesses, unrelated to the speculative binge of playing the stock market, would create widespread suffering.⁶By the summer of 1932, the unemployment rate was 25% and the underemployment rate approached 40%.
    Hard times affected the Beaches. The population dropped. Mayport city had 511 (399 in 1920 and 441 in 1910) and Atlantic Beach town had 164 but Mayport precinct had 1,003; Jacksonville Beach area had 882 but city had 409 (357 in 1920 and 249 in 1910). Palm Valley had 63 people. In 1931, the Florida East Coast Railway went into receivership and discontinued its service to the Beaches and Mayport. The tracks were removed; the right of way sold; and the berm was leveled. It could not compete with automobiles in its passenger service. The switch to oil-burning locomotives from coal meant freighting coal from the docks at Mayport was not economical. Developers converted land from the right-of-way at the Beaches to residential lots between 1935 and 1937. Duval County bought the right-of-way from the Spring Glen area out to the beach. No longer could one ride to or from Jacksonville for a quarter. In an age when few had cars, this loss of transportation hurt. Tourism, the lifeblood, slowed considerably. In February, 1931, the Jacksonville Journal reported low morale and ill health among people in Jacksonville; surely people at the Beaches felt the same.⁷
    Angry with the government of Jacksonville Beach because they believed not enough services were being provided in return for taxes, a group of citizens created Neptune Beach on June 10, 1931. By November,1939, the town had 340 dwellings, a tiny city hall, a little business district on the south side of Atlantic Boulevard, paved roads, a bulkhead, fire and police stations, and a water and sewer system. In 1936-37, fifty-two houses were built in the little town. Neptune renamed many of its streets in 1937 to conform to the numerical system adopted by Jacksonville Beach that same year. In 1938, Peter Jensen erected a commercial building (shown below) which housed a number of businesses, including Pete’s Bar. Dwight Wilson, Archivist Emeritus of the Beaches Area Historical Society, says the little town allowed Jewish people to live there when other communities would not.⁸

Figure 4-6 Jensen Building

Prosperity for the Beaches' economy depended upon tourism from the greater Jacksonville area, the Southeast U.S., and, to a lesser extent, people from the Midwest and East Coast. Tourism was seasonal, lasting from early May through Labor Day in September. Thousands would come for a day or longer to enjoy the ocean and the various amusements. Forty thousand people on a major weekend was common. The money earned fed those in the tourist business and a large share of the Beaches' population. Although the Beaches were a bedroom community for Jacksonville, the number of commuters was small. Even smaller were the number of people who owned second homes on the beach, summer residences. So Beaches leaders had to increase tourism to bring back prosperity.
In an effort to promote the beach area for tourism and settlement, the Chamber of Commerce published a pamphlet in 1931 calling the Beaches “The World’s Finest Beach.” It said the strand was 40 miles long and bragged that it was 600 feet wide. The beach had beautiful dunes but the sand was so hard packed that cars could park on the beach and airplanes could use it as a landing field. The Florida land boom brought people and improvements such as new city hall, new sewer system, new water system, and more paved streets. The pier provided a place to sightsee or dance or fish. The Red Cross Lifeguard Corps provided protection to swimmers. Getting to the Beaches was possible via Atlantic Boulevard, a 32-feet wide, lighted road between Jacksonville and the Beaches. That same year, Walter Lees and Frederick A. Brossy fly a Bellanca airplane from Jacksonville Beach and establish an non-refueling endurance record of 84 hours, 33 minutes. The next year, 1932, the American Legion sponsored an automobile race called "100 Miles of Ponte Vedra," in an attempt to ape the success of Daytona Beach. The idea did not catch on.⁹

    In spite of the hard times of the Depression, the beaches thrived in time. Part of it was because land was cheap and people who had money took advantage of the low real estate prices. The Arnot Building, a movie theatre, and the Wave Crest Hotel as well as lesser buildings went up in Jacksonville Beach while the Lovett Building graced Atlantic Beach. Arthur Penman built a house on Florida Boulevard in his Neptune Forest subdivision in 1936, expanding the development of Neptune Beach. Then, in 1939 and 1940, he built two houses in the Pine Grove subdivision in Jacksonville Beach. Penman was honored by both towns with a road named for him. Amusements, bars, and other tourism provided income as people from Jacksonville, north Florida, and south Georgia sought relief from daily life. People came to the Boardwalk for relief. Jacksonville Beach was more “open” than Jacksonville, thus giving it an economic advantage in the amusement business. Atlantic Boulevard, paved and lighted in 1925 made it easier to get to the Beaches. The end of prohibition in late 1933 meant the bars reopened. The pier became more popular. Government money gave people spending power.¹⁴
    Jacksonville grew from 129,549 in 1930 to 173,065 in 1940, a 36.6% increase but Jacksonville Beach grew much faster. In the 1930s, Jacksonville Beach experienced fantastic growth, going from 409 people in 1930 to 3,566 people in 1940. People flocked to the easier life in a warmer climate. Land at the Beaches was cheaper, so people moved there. Houses and apartments were built to supply the demand. Many dwellings. As late as 2003, we know that 67 structures, mostly single-family dwellings, still existed in South Jacksonville Beach and 63 in north Jacksonville Beach. Of these 130 structures, five were commercial, 71 were single-family dwellings, 35 were duplexes, 10 triplexes, four quadraplexes, and 2 with 5 or more apartments. Because of development over almost seventy years, the total number built in the 1930s was much higher. By 1935, Jacksonville Beach had 1,094 people, an increase of 695 since 1930. Of these 797 were "white" and 297 were "black." Outside the city limits, there were an additional people of whom 359 were "white" and 43 were "black." Mayport had 511 and Atlantic Beach had 164.¹⁵
    We get a glimpse of life at the Beaches by looking at the 1935 telephone directory below. Although the list is truncated, almost all of it is shown. Telephones were expensive in 1935 so few people or businesses had them. Earl Roberts was the only physician and there was no hospital. The list does not include Mayport. The number of residential telephones shown is eighty-five; the total was less than one hundred.

    Then, in 1937, Jacksonville Beach changed many streets names in the belief that doing so would make it easier for visitors to navigate. Most avenues became numerical with Pablo Avenue serving as the boundary between avenues north and south. Streets such as Mundy Boulevard. Pablo Avenue and Shetter Avenue remained the same. Neptune Beach also changed some street names.
    Private enterprise played a role in bringing the Beaches out of the Depression; the fancy resort and housing development called Ponte Vedra Beach was developed from Mineral City in St. Johns County. The building of Ponte Vedra would spur growth in Jacksonville Beach because money was being spent within a small economy and because part of the development would be houses in south Jacksonville Beach. In October, 1928, men meeting in the office of National Lead, Inc. decided to hire Telfair Stockton Company of Jacksonville to create a grand design for its seventeen miles o property in Mineral City. The mining was no longer viable but the growth of the Beaches as a resort gave National Lead an alternative use for the property.
    From the first, they did not want the development to have the honky-tonk atmosphere of the Boardwalk area of Jacksonville Beach and they wanted it to be a higher class resort than Atlantic Beach. In short, they wanted to create an upper-middle class and upper class resort and development, one that would be an exclusive private club. So they chose Joe Davin as the land engineer and Jim Stockton as the designer, planner, and manager of the resort. Stockton was a graduate of Princeton in 1916 so he recruited upper-class clients in 1937 by using his Princeton alumni connections.

Figure 4-10    Mineral City, 1928

    The property had a club house and nine-hole golf course; National Lead had built them for its managerial employees, their guests, and visiting executives. For half of the year it was much more pleasant than New York or other eastern cities. The log cabin built in 1927 was temporarily used by guests until The Inn opened in 1937. The Stockton company removed the shacks and mining equipment. It commissioned landscaping to beautify. It pressured the state to build a coastal highway, A1A, to St. Augustine to entice settlement. Equally important, they initially sold lots cheaply to get people there. They built attractive edifices befitting their proposed clientele--a Bath Club (which had a dance floor), a swimming pool for those who wanted to avoid the ocean, and then The Inn and guest cottages. The golf course was expanded to an 18-hole course. The 130 acre golf course was built in 1931-32 with 100 mules doing work. Lagoons were dug out of swampland. Talented employees were hired. The key to the good domestic service and maintenance was Collis Quarterman, a "black" man, recruited and supervised a large staff. Over a half million dollars in construction monies were spent, money which surged through the Beaches' economy multiplying as it did so. Mineral City was renamed Ponte Vedra Beach, a Hispanic name chosen to reflect the "European" character of the resort.
    Stockton wrote to his fellow Princeton University alumni to encourage them to visit and, perhaps, buy property and membership in the Ponte Vedra Inn & Country Club. It worked. The resort saw the likes of the famous radio commentator Edward R. Murrow and the film star Dana Andrews as guests in addition to the ordinary well-to-do and wealthy. National Lead sold its interests in 1942. Ponte Vedra was self-sustaining. The Ponte Vedra Inn & Club was successful enough that Tommy Sabin bought 600 feet of oceanfront further south and built the 32-room Innlet in 1940. In 1944, the Ponte Vedra Inn & Club bought it. In 1947, thirty apartments were added.¹⁶
    Other developments made the Beaches a better place to live. “On October 17, 1937, fifty-nine dedicated worshipers gathered in the old Beach Theater in Jacksonville Beach to form Rising Tide Methodist Church – the forerunner to today’s Beach United Methodist. “¹⁷ St. Paul’s Catholic Church bought a city block of land and, in 1940, started building a church and parish hall. St. Paul’s would create an elementary school. In that year, “Pogy” people from the Carolinas brought five boats and their crews to Mayport, creating employment. The Pogy or menhaden, fish factory produced fish oil and fertilizer and paid 10 cents/hour to men who shoveled processed pogy ten hours a day ($1/day). Women worked in a crab processing plant.¹⁸. In 1937, Duval County paid FEC $8,500 for right-of-way to Jacksonville Beach. Became State Road 376. County used WPA money to clear right of way, put in drainage, etc. Cost $1,576,000 of which over $500,00 was federal. WW II killed project in 1941^.19.
    By 1940, the Beaches had become prosperous and continued to grow. By 1940s, Duval County’s population increased 37% between 1920-30 and 35.1% between 1930-1940. Atlantic Beach went from 164 people to 468 people. Neptune Beach, which was part of Jacksonville Beach in 1930, had 1,363 citizens by 1940. The Palm Valley precinct, which included Ponte Vedra Beach, had 341 in 1940. Jacksonville Beach grew the most spectacularly from 409 persons in 1930 to 3,566 persons in 1940, an increase of 872%.²⁰
    Much of the growth was spurred by the creation of military bases by the New Deal, for President Roosevelt and Congress reacted to World War II even though the U.S. was not involved for over two years. The war had begun in September, 1939. In fact, the Japanese had taken a chunk of China in 1931, then launched a brutal all-our war with China in 1937. Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939; soon thereafter the United Kingdom and France, guarantors of Polish sovereignty, declared war on Germany. The U.S. government watched these events closely and moved to strengthen the nation's naval defenses. Jacksonville leaders, for their part, had been lobbying Washington for a naval base, arguing the geographical location of the city made it advisable.
    Bases were built. Jacksonville Naval Air Station on the St. Johns River across from Mandarin was opened in October, 1940, having been authorized the year before. Local money had joined national money to acquire the requisite and construct buildings. By June, 1941, sailors were frequenting the Beaches for fun and games. Cecil Field, an auxiliary naval air field, was commissioned west of Jacksonville NAS in June, 1941. The Mayport Naval Station was selected as an auxiliary station in 1939; in December,1942, the Mayport Naval Section Base was commissioned. In 1943, it became a Sea Frontier Base. In April, 1944, the Naval Auxiliary Air Station was built adjacent to the frontier base. Thus millions, if not billions, of dollars were poured into the Duval County economy during World War II stimulating the economy and creating permanent wealth. The U.S. government spent much of the Gross Domestic Product on the war, raising taxes and borrowing to pay for it. More distant but within traveling distance of the Beaches was Green Cove Springs, home of Lee Field and then the Atlantic mothball fleet, 1946-61. The Navy became an essential component of the Jacksonville area economy.     The Beaches benefited from sailor tourism from all three bases but more directly from Mayport because of its proximity. Naval and civilian personnel bought, stayed, and played at the Beaches. When the war ended in 1945, the two Mayport bases were decommissioned, a blow to the economy of the Beaches.
    The Navy took much of the old villages of Mayport, East Mayport, and Wonderwood. Navy bulldozed St Joseph’s Catholic Church. The Lighthouse property was swallowed by the base. In the1930s, there had been a school for African-Americans in East Mayport , a grades 1-6 school where Miss Short taught. The Navy took the property. In time, the Navy would acquire more property to meet its needs and desires.
    World War II was a direct experience for Beaches residents. In April, 1942, a German submarine sank the tanker S. S. Gulfamerica off the coast. People could see the fire. Some made an effort to rescue the survivors. Security measures were adopted. Residents were required to use blackout curtains, car headlights were hooded, and beach barriers were erected so that ships would not be silhouetted against the shore. Residents had to carry passes. A few months later, on June 17th, four German saboteurs landed at Ponte Vedra Beach in Operation Pastorius. For 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 had boxes of incendiary devices, bombs, and money. They walked to Jacksonville Beach and then took a bus to Jacksonville. After a large breakfast, two checked into the Seminole Hotel, two into 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 27^th. they had been ratted out by one of the Long Island party before the Florida group had landed. After a secret military trial, the Ponte Vedra four were executed on August 8, 1942 .²¹
    The Beaches saw other war-related changes. In 1942, the Army built a Combat Team Camp in Atlantic Beach on 150 acres. In 1943, the Casa Marina Hotel was leased to the US government to house immigrant workers and converted into forty-nine apartments. The first hospital at the Beaches was founded in a former motel on 1^st Avenue South.²² Beginning in 1943 and then again in 1947, B. B. McCormick & Sons started constructing 48 buildings from Fifth Avenue South to 16th Avenue North which would contain 354 apartments. Ben McCormick acquired much by barter, trading the work of his construction company for property. He had obtained land from the City of Jacksonville Beach in 1937, filling it in when necessary, to make it suitable for building. ²³ Thus, affordable housing was provided for civilian and military families. All was done through New Deal programs.
    Although the Beaches community had grown, the shore still remained relatively small. One indicator is the size of the 1943 Fletcher High School graduating class of 57. Another is the student population of two other "white" schools at the Beaches.

SCHOOL	1940	1941	1942	1943	1944
Fletcher Jr.-Sr. HS	414	462	489	496	509
Jacksonville Beach Elementary	377	349	384	459	533
Atlantic Beach Elementary	135	145	158	194	232
TOTAL	926	956	1031	1149	1274

Figure 4-13 Aerial Photo #1
This photograph shows southern Jacksonville Beach and Ponte Vedra Beach (where the lakes or lagoons are) in 1942. The island in the lagoon (lower right) is the Ninth Hole of the golf course. The left side of the photograph shows marsh land and part of Pablo Creek/San Pablo River.

North of Ponte Vedra lies south Jacksonville Beach. The scale of these photos is not the same. The small lake/lagoon at the top Aerial Photo #1 can be seen towards the bottom of Aerial Photo #2. At the top right of #2, one can see a square with walks in an X-shape; City Hall is located there.

One sees the pier just north of the X-shaped square. This was and is the downtown. Just to the left of the square one can see the remnants of the Florida East Coast Railroad which was removed in the 1931-32.

The lower right shows the downtown square and pier. At the upper left, underneath the numerals, is Fletcher Junior-Senior High School. North of it is Neptune Beach.

The pier was part of the Atlantic Beach Hotel complex owned by the Adams family.

This photo shows Seminole Road running through northern Atlantic Beach through Burnside/Seminole/Manhattan Beach to Mayport. At the top of the photo one can see part of the Village of Mayport, Wonderwood, and sand dunes.

The St. Johns River jetties channel the mouth of the river. The white in the photo is sand. The road is Seminole Road. Ribault Bay, which became the Mayport carrier basin is barely visible in the center left. As the aerial photos show better than words, the Beaches were sparsely populated; one did not have to travel very far west from the ocean to encounter empty land and then low-lying terrain and marshes. Several city blocks north and south of downtown Jacksonville Beach were the most settled. As one went north or south, population density declined. Although the argument was made that the political jurisdictions in this north-south strip should be combined because they all faced common problems and opportunities and had a common school in Fletcher, they remained separate. Some of it was social class. Mayport and Palm Valley did not have the same prestige that Atlantic Beach or Ponte Vedra Beach had. Some of it was the fact that Jacksonville Beach was the workplace of the Beaches, the source of much of the income, the tourist center with its carny-style Boardwalk, bars, whorehouses, and such. One could live in Jacksonville Beach and completely ignore the entertainment business; most people did.
By 1945, World War II ended with the August 15, 1945 and the Japanese signing the surrender documents on September 2,1945; the Beaches had grown substantially. Population figures demonstrated it. The Palm Valley precinct had 561 people of whom 406 were classified as “white” and 155 "black" (27.6%). Mayport had 1,236 of whom 881 were “white” and 881 were "black." Neptune Beach had 1,298 “whites” within its city limits and another 402 persons outside the city limits of whom 391 were "white" and 11 were "black." Atlantic Beach had 956 (921 “white,” 35 "black"). Jacksonville Beach had 5,943 people (5274 “whites,” 669 "blacks" (11.3%) and there were another 779 “whites” outside the city limits.

1. State of Florida, Department. of Agriculture, The fifth census of the state of Florida taken in the year 1925: in accordance with the provisions of Chapter 6826, Laws of Florida, Acts of the Legislature of 1915. (Tallahassee: T. J. Appleyard, Inc., 1926, p. 20, 49. Johnston, Architectural Resources, p. 70 says there were 620 persons in Jacksonville Beach in 1925; in 1875, the area where Palm Valley and Ponte Vedra Beach are now was transferred to St. Johns County. Michel Oesterreicher, 1996, pp. 14-15.
2. Ward, Old Hickory, pp. 208-10.
3. Johnny Woodhouse, “First Coaster at Beach Had Pedigree, “ Times to Remember: A calendar for 2004, Jacksonville Beach, FL: The Beaches Leader, 2003. Peddy lived at 222 First Street South; for a time, he was an uncle of the author. In 1950, the coaster was taken down. All the remained was the Coaster Bath House as a reminder that it was there.
4. Miller, Land Boom, 91-92 , 119ff. He cites the Florida Times-Union and the Jacksonville Journal.
5. Foley, “What Next After Fire? Beaches Partied On”, Florida Times-Union, Aug 16, 1997; Oesterreicher, p. 92; Jacksonville Journal, September 7, 1928; Elaine B. Koehl, The Ponte Vedra Club; Johnston, Architectural Resources, pp. 81-84.
6. Ward, Old Hickory's Town, pp. 210-216; Donald J. Mabry, "The Great Depression and Herbert Hoover," Historical Text Archive.
7. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Report of the 15^th Census, Florida 1930 ) (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1931), pp. 142, 154; Johnston, Architectural Resources, pp. 70-71; Floyd, Lighthouse, 30.
8. Johnston, Architectural Resources, pp. 73-76.
9. Jacksonville Beaches Chamber of Commerce, The World’s Finest Beach, Pamphlet Advertisement, 1931. The development was Ponte Vedra Beach, of course. Bill Foley, “Disgust With Big-City Rat Race Gave the Beaches Life in the 1880s,” Florida Times-Union, August 20, 1997.
10. "Civic Organizations, Public Officials And Individuals Joined In Fight For Four Lane Super Highway To The Beaches," Beach Boulevard Dedication Pamphlet. 2 pp.
11."Civic Organizations." The Florida Times-Union published an article with photographs on the end of the season in September, 1935.
12. Floyd, Lighthouse, 34-35; Oesterreicher, pp. 128-33..For moonshining in north Florida, see John J. Guthrie, Jr., "Hard Times, Hard Liquor, and Hard Luck: Selective Enforcement of Prohibition in North Florida, 1928-1933." Florida Historical Quarterly, 74:4. (April, 1994) p.435-452).
13 Johnston, Architectural Resources, p. 76, says the school cost $75,000; Floyd, Lighthouse, p. 32; Ward, Old Hickory's Town, pp. 112-117; Johnston, Architectural Resources, p. 78. "Black" citizens were bussed into Jacksonville. A few Roman Catholics went elsewhere. See John J. Guthrie, Jr., “Rekindling the Spirits: From National Prohibition to Local Option in Florida, 1928-1935,” Florida Historical Quarterly 74:1 (Summer 1995, 23-40; Michael Gannon, Florida, A Short History. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1993, pp. 89-92 points out the importance of New Deal spending and the revival of tourism in mid-decade.
14. Johnston, Architectural Resources, pp. 73-75, 78, 86.
15. Florida, State of. Department of Agriculture. The sixth census of the state of Florida, 1935: taken in accordance with the provisions of chapter 17269 Laws of Florida. Winter Park, Orange Press, 1936, pp. 25, 77.
16. Koehl, The Ponte Vedra Club
17 Beaches United Methodist Church web site.
18. Floyd, Lighthouse, p. 32.
19. Arthur N. Sollee. Official dedication program for Beach Boulevard and the B. B. McCormick Bridge. 1949. pamphlet.
20. US Dept of Commerce, Florida census for 1940, reprinted by Agriculture Department, Florida, 126-27, 140.
21. Leon 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.
22. Johnston, Architectural Resources, pp. 95-96.
23. Bill Foley, “Jacksonville Beach goes future modern, “ Florida Times-Union, August 13, 1999; Johnston, Architectural Resources, pp. 96-97, 100.
24. Florida, State of, PALMM Project, Aerial Tiles from Flight 1C over Duval in 1943.
25. Simon, 5, 17, 19, 26. On page 29, he says that there 15,000 people at the Beaches. Simon did not include Mayport and the African-American elementary school in Jacksonville building. Council of Social Agencies, Jacksonville Looks At Its Negro Community (Jacksonville, May, 1946).
26. Florida, Dept. of Agriculture, The seventh census of the state of Florida, 1945: taken in accordance with the provisions of chapter 22515 Laws of Florida, Act of Legislature of 1945. (Tallahassee, 1946), pp. 25, 49.Department of Agriculture, Florida Seventh Census, 1945, pp. 25, 49.
27. Ibid.

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