The Fernandina Plaza Historic State Park in Outdated City Fernandina.
Outdated City, the unique web site of Fernandina, holds the distinctive distinction of being the final Spanish metropolis platted within the Western Hemisphere, specified by 1811. Surveyor George J. F. Clarke designed the city following the 1573 Legal guidelines of the Indies, Spain’s official pointers for organizing new settlements throughout its colonial enlargement.
On the time, Spain nonetheless managed Florida, and Outdated City was supposed as a strategic barrier towards U.S. territorial development. Because the closest East Coast free port to the USA, it shortly developed a popularity as a haven for saloons, bordellos, pirates, smugglers, and slave merchants. Earlier than Florida’s switch to U.S. management, an estimated 5,000 enslaved folks handed by way of Fernandina, certain for plantations throughout the American South.
On January 29, 1990, Outdated City was formally listed on the U.S. Nationwide Register of Historic Locations, preserving its significance as a uncommon and storied remnant of Spanish colonial planning.
This historic Fernandina Seaside railroad depot opened in 1899. The depot is now dwelling to the Amelia Island Vacationer Growth Council.
Fernandina Seaside marks the jap finish of one in every of Florida’s oldest railroads. Of the 5 rail strains constructed within the state earlier than the Civil Struggle, the Florida Railroad, operating from Fernandina to Cedar Key, was probably the most important, because it created a cross-state transport route and opened huge new areas for improvement.
Building started in Fernandina Seaside in 1855, led by its proprietor, U.S. Senator David Levy Yulee. His bold imaginative and prescient was to hyperlink the Gulf of Mexico with the Atlantic Ocean, permitting ships to keep away from the damaging Florida Straits. The railroad was constructed largely by enslaved laborers and reached Cedar Key in March 1861, simply weeks earlier than the Civil Struggle erupted.
The battle shortly took its toll. In January 1862, Union forces destroyed a lot of Yulee’s operations at Cedar Key. Over the next years, each Union and Accomplice troops dismantled or destroyed massive parts of observe between Cedar Key and Fernandina Seaside. Bankrupted in 1866, the road was finally reorganized and bought by Sir Edward James Reed in 1881.
Right this moment, this unique stretch of Yulee’s railroad is a part of the First Coast Railroad (FCRD), a 32-mile brief line freight service that connects with CSX Transportation and St. Mary’s Railroad. Its fundamental clients embody the Port of Fernandina, Smurfit WestRock, and Rayonier paper mills, shifting items corresponding to chemical compounds, coal, forest merchandise, metals, pulp, paper, and petroleum merchandise. The FCRD grew to become a part of Genesee & Wyoming in 2005.
The Palace Saloon is Florida’s oldest working saloon. It was initially constructed as a haberdashery in 1878. In 1903, it grew to become a gentleman’s saloon.
Whereas Outdated City nonetheless stands, Fernandina was relocated in 1853 to make the most of David Yulee’s Florida Railroad and the tourism increase it sparked. Along with his line linking Florida’s deepwater ports on the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, Yulee envisioned Fernandina because the “Manhattan of the South.”
He platted a brand new Fernandina roughly a mile south of Outdated City, positioning it because the jap transport terminus of his railroad. The brand new settlement shortly thrived, drawing freebooters, pirates, and smugglers. By the late nineteenth century, it had turn out to be one in every of Florida’s main ports, whereas Outdated City steadily light right into a quiet residential neighborhood.
Right this moment, Fernandina’s 55-block downtown historic district boasts greater than 400 buildings listed on the Nationwide Register of Historic Locations. At its coronary heart lies Centre Avenue, a two-mile hyperlink from the historic waterfront to the seashore, lined with a lot of quaint outlets, artwork galleries, and eating places.
*Shrimp boats alongside North Entrance Avenue. *
Fernandina Seaside proudly carries the title of “Shrimp Capital of the World” because the birthplace of the fashionable shrimping business. The transformation started in 1902 when Sallecito Salvador, a Sicilian immigrant residing in Fernandina Seaside, pioneered a brand new shrimping methodology. By equipping his boat with a small horsepower engine, Salvador generated sufficient energy to tug a shrimp seine throughout the ocean flooring in deeper waters. 4 years later, in 1906, he launched his personal enterprise, S. Salvador & Sons.
The business really took off in 1913 when newcomer Captain Billy Corkum launched the otter trawl for shrimping. This innovation allowed fishermen to work in deeper waters and goal areas the place shrimp had been most ample, dramatically rising yields.
Shrimping remained Nassau County’s main business till the Nice Despair. At its peak, Fernandina was dwelling to a bustling processing plant that serviced greater than 130 shrimp boats. Nevertheless, in current many years, the rise of imported farmed shrimp has led to a steep decline within the once-thriving native business.
A view of the Port of Fernandina from North Entrance Avenue.
The Port of Fernandina is a deepwater port with a storied and sometimes colourful previous. In the course of the American Revolution, it grew to become the scene of one of many largest mass migrations within the New World, as hundreds of Loyalists fled from the northern states to British-controlled Florida.
When the USA outlawed the transatlantic slave commerce in 1807, Fernandina nonetheless beneath Spanish rule, emerged because the closest “East Coast free port” to U.S. territory. The city shortly grew to become a haven for slave merchants, smugglers, and pirates, its docks bustling with illicit commerce.
The arrival of the Florida Railroad remodeled the port into a significant transport hub, at one level rating because the busiest port in Florida. In the course of the Spanish American Struggle, it served as a key base for transporting army provides to Cuba.
Right this moment, the Port of Fernandina stays an important a part of the town’s working waterfront. It supplies terminal providers to pulp and paper producers throughout Florida and the Southeast, handles metal exports for regional mills, and helps impartial container strains serving locations corresponding to Colombia, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Aruba, Curaçao, and Bermuda.
Editorial by Ennis Davis, AICP. Contact Ennis at edavis@moderncities.com