Jacksonville (Florida), city in northeastern Florida, the state's most populous city as well as its leading financial and insurance center. Jacksonville consolidated with surrounding Duval County in 1968 and formed one of the cities with the largest jurisdiction in the United States, covering a land area of 1,964.8 sq km (758.6 sq mi). Through the consolidation the city now fronts the Atlantic Ocean. Jacksonville in the 1990s began to orient itself to Florida and its services-driven economy after being tied to nearby southern Georgia throughout its history (the state line is only 40 km [25 mi] to the north of the city center). Health and insurance industries, government, and tourism sustain the local economy.
Jacksonville lines both banks of the Saint Johns River, with its downtown district about 30 km (about 20 mi) upstream from where the river empties into the Atlantic Ocean. Its mean elevation is 2 m (8 ft). The city's climate is humid subtropical, but tends to be somewhat cooler than the Florida peninsula to the south. Winters can be marked by spells of cold weather, and limited snow or ice accumulations occur once every few years. In January the average high temperature is 18C (64F) and the average low is 5C (41F); in July the average high is 33C (91F) and the average low is 22C (72F). Normal annual precipitation is 1,304 mm (51.3 in), with the largest monthly totals accumulating from June through September.
Jacksonville is named for Andrew Jackson, Florida's first territorial governor and later the seventh president of the United States. Jackson never visited his namesake city.
Jacksonville grew substantially in the 1980s and 1990s as the city's service industries expanded and new businesses were attracted to the city. In 1980 the population was 540,920. By 2000 the population was 735,617. In 2003, Jacksonville's population was estimated at 773,781.
According to the 2000 census, the city's population was 64.5 percent white, 29 percent black, 2.8 percent Asian, 0.3 percent Native American, and 0.1 percent Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander. People of mixed heritage or not reporting race made up 3.3 percent of the population. Hispanics, who may be of any race, were 4.2 percent of the people.
The consolidation of Jacksonville and Duval County into one jurisdiction united the central city with its surrounding suburbs, making modern Jacksonville an unusually dispersed city. The Jacksonville metropolitan area includes four counties—Duval (the most populous), Clay, Nassau, and Saint Johns. Covering 6,826.2 sq km (2,635.6 sq mi), the population of the area in 2003 was 1,203,000. In addition to Jacksonville, the metropolitan area includes Jacksonville Beach, Fernandina Beach, Atlantic Beach, Orange Park, and Saint Augustine—the oldest permanent European settlement in the United States.
Jacksonville's universities and colleges include the University of North Florida (1965), Jacksonville University (1934), Edward Waters College (1866), Jones College (1918), several small religious colleges, and a large community college. Public primary and secondary education is provided by the Duval County School District, among the nation's largest.
A leading cultural facility is the Cummer Gallery of Art, with displays of Western and Asian painting and an extensive collection of Meissen porcelain. Other attractions include the Museum of Science and History and its archaeological exhibits about Florida's Native Americans; the Karpeles Manuscript Museum, with displays of historic documents that rotate among the other Karpeles museums in the nation; the Jacksonville Art Museum, featuring contemporary and classic art; and the Jacksonville Historical Center, depicting the city's past. In the north of the city is the Jacksonville Zoological Park, with extensive wildlife exhibits, river excursions, and Okavango Village, a re-creation of an African riverfront community.
The National Park Service administers the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, located east of downtown between the lower Saint Johns and the Nassau Rivers. Created in 1988, the reserve protects river estuaries and historic sites, including evidence of the Timucua people who once inhabited northeast Florida. In the reserve is Fort Caroline National Memorial, the probable location of an attempt by the French to colonize Florida in 1564. The memorial contains a reduced-scale re-creation of the original fort. Also in the reserve is Kingsley Plantation, the oldest remaining plantation house in Florida. Along with the planter's home are 23 of the original slave quarters.
Jacksonville has a symphony orchestra and numerous theatrical groups, including one of the nation's longest running community theaters. The premier stage in the city is the Florida Theatre, built as a movie house in 1927 and restored in 1983.
Among the city's leading recreation facilities is the riverfront Metropolitan Park, site for many of the performances in the fall Jacksonville Jazz Festival and home to the Florida National Pavilion. A number of beach resorts on the Atlantic coast, particularly Fernandina Beach and Jacksonville Beach, provide fishing, swimming, boating, golf, and tennis. The Jacksonville Jaguars of the National Football League play professional football at the ALLTEL Stadium. The newly renovated Gator Bowl stadium is home to an annual college football matchup held on the Saturday closest to New Year's Day. The Players Championship of professional golf is held annually in nearby Ponte Vedra.
The Riverwalk, a landscaped complex along the south bank of the Saint Johns River, is a popular gathering place. It features a boardwalk 1.9 km (1.2 mi) long and the Friendship Fountain, spectacularly lit at night.
Jacksonville is a center for business, manufacturing, finance, insurance, culture, and medicine in northeastern Florida and nearby Georgia. It is also a major deepwater port of entry that has long been the home of important United States Navy facilities, including the Mayport Naval Station and the Jacksonville Naval Air Station. The Intracoastal Waterway passes through the city.
Jacksonville is Florida's most industrialized city. Drawing on the raw materials produced by the region's farms, forests, and mines, manufacturers produce chemicals, pulp and paper products, fabricated metal products, paints, plastics, machine parts, and processed foods. Tourism is also important to the local economy. Large office complexes have been built in downtown Jacksonville and at a number of outlying sites along interstates 295 and 95, particularly in the Butler Boulevard area in southern Jacksonville.
Jacksonville is well connected to the rest of its metropolitan region by Interstate 95 (the main north-south axis of urban development) and Interstate 10 (which originates in Jacksonville and connects the city to Florida's panhandle); Interstate 295 bypasses the densest areas of Jacksonville to the west, linking the city's northern and southern sections and avoiding the downtown bottleneck where Interstate 95 crosses the Saint Johns River at the Fuller Warren Bridge.
In addition to being a regional highway crossroads, the city is a railway hub, with Amtrak passenger service and several freight routes. The city's expanding airport, located in northern Jacksonville, was the nation's fastest growing in passenger volume in the mid-1990s.
Jacksonville has a mayor-council form of municipal government. The mayor and the 19 councilors are elected to four-year terms.
The Timucua people resided in the Jacksonville region for centuries before Europeans first arrived in 1562, led by French explorer Jean Ribault. The Europeans carried diseases to the Timucuans, who lacked immunity and were quickly decimated. In 1564 the first white settlement in the area of modern Jacksonville was established by French Huguenots (the name given the French followers of Protestantism). They built Fort Caroline on a bluff above the Saint Johns River. In 1565 troops from the Spanish settlement of San Agust?n (now Saint Augustine) attacked the fort and killed its defenders. Meanwhile, French troops sailing to attack San Agust?n were shipwrecked by a storm and later massacred by the Spanish. While the French destroyed Fort Caroline in a battle three years later, they never again attempted settlement in Florida. The British took control of the area from Spain under a treaty ending the French and Indian War (1754-1763).
Jacksonville grew up around a ford, or shallow place, in the Saint Johns River. Because settlers drove cattle across the river there, the community was first known as Cowford. In 1822 (the year after the Florida territory came under United States control) a more formal community was laid out and named for the new governor, Andrew Jackson. Jacksonville was chartered as a town in 1832 and incorporated as a city in 1859. By the mid-19th century, it had become an important port for the timber, cotton, and citrus fruits that were produced in the city's growing hinterland. During the American Civil War (1861-1865), Jacksonville was occupied by Union troops on four separate occasions, and much of the city was destroyed by the end of that war.
By the 1880s Jacksonville was attracting a growing number of winter vacationers, which prompted the completion of the first railroad line from the North. Once this line began operating, Jacksonville immediately became a vacation mecca (nicknamed “The Winter City in the Summer Land”), luring more than 100,000 visitors per year. In the same era, however, a yellow fever epidemic in 1888 killed hundreds of inhabitants and a disastrous fire in 1901 destroyed the city again only 40 years after the Civil War. But Jacksonville quickly rebuilt itself and continued to grow and prosper.
During World War II (1939-1945) the United States government constructed military installations in the area, including the Mayport naval facility, which became one of the United States Navy's most important bases in the Southeast. Following the war, Jacksonville decentralized as a result of population movement to the suburbs. The Civil Rights Movement produced upheaval in the city during the 1950s and 1960s because Jacksonville at the time was one of the South's leading bastions of racial segregation; associated rioting broke out in 1966. The crusade to produce social change led to effective school desegregation and urban renewal programs. Also helping to launch the new era was the 1968 consolidation with Duval County, still regarded as one of the most ambitious metropolitan government experiments undertaken in America.
By the 1970s and 1980s, Jacksonville had become part of the Sun Belt development thrust that was transforming many of the nation's southern-tier states. Expansion of existing industries together with the creation of a thriving new service sector drew thousands of job-seeking migrants to the area. The new business community successfully transformed the city's image, one of its greatest successes being the attraction of the Mayo Clinic's first satellite facility outside its home base in Rochester, Minnesota. During this period the city oversaw the cleanup of emissions from its paper and chemical manufacturing plants. In the 1990s the successful luring of a major league football franchise galvanized the city.
Contributed By:
Peter O. Muller
Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville, Florida's largest city, lies along the banks of the Saint Johns River. The city is the economic, cultural, and medical center for both northeastern Florida and southeastern Georgia. The ALLTEL stadium, in the foreground, is home to the Jacksonville Jaguars football team.
Corbis/Alan Schein