Amelia Island for history lovers

Eight national flags have flown over Amelia Island — more than over any other place in the United States — and unusually, most of the physical evidence is still standing.

Why so much history

Geography. The island sits at the mouth of the St Marys River, which for three centuries was a contested colonial and national border. France, Spain, Britain, Spain again, two filibuster flags, Mexico and the United States — plus the Confederacy, depending on how you count.

Then the railroad arrived, making Fernandina the Atlantic terminus of the first cross-Florida line, and the money built the Victorian downtown that is still there.

Day 1: the north end, chronologically

Start at Old Town Fernandina. North of the modern downtown, laid out on a Spanish plat of 1811 — reputedly among the last towns platted under Spanish rule anywhere in the New World. The grid, the block pattern and the Plaza San Carlos survive. It is a quiet residential neighbourhood with historical markers and no shops, and almost nobody visits it.

Then Bosque Bello Cemetery, nearby: the island's old burial ground, established in the Spanish period, live oaks and Spanish moss over graves spanning the island's several nationalities. Twenty minutes, and one of the quietest places on Amelia Island.

Then Fort Clinch State Park, whose entrance is at the edge of Old Town. Construction began in 1847 as part of the Third System of American coastal fortifications. It was never finished and never fought over, which is precisely why so much survives — no siege damage, but enough Confederate and then Union occupation in the Civil War to give the interpretation something real to work with.

Walk the ramparts, go down into the galleries, see the kitchens, barracks and bakery. Living-history programmes run on the first weekend of most months. The candlelight tours in the cooler months, by reservation, are the best thing the park does — interpreters in first person, by lamplight — and they sell out.

Allow half a day for the fort alone.

Afternoon: downtown. The Amelia Island Museum of History, in the former county jail, is the fastest route into the Eight Flags sequence, the Timucua before European contact, the railroad and the shrimping industry. Its guided walking tours of the historic district are the thing to check for — being walked down Centre Street by someone who knows which building was what beats any panel.

Then the district itself: fifty blocks on the National Register, Victorian and Queen Anne commercial buildings, and the Palace Saloon on Centre Street — carved mahogany bar, embossed tin ceiling, and a long-standing claim to being Florida's oldest continuously operating bar.

Sunset at the marina, in front of a working shrimp fleet, which is itself the surviving industry the town was built on.

Day 2: American Beach, then south

American Beach is the most historically significant square mile on Amelia Island and the least signposted.

In 1935, the Afro-American Life Insurance Company of Jacksonville — whose president Abraham Lincoln Lewis was Florida's first Black millionaire — bought oceanfront land so that Black Floridians, barred from Florida's public beaches under segregation, would have a shoreline they owned. It became a full resort community with hotels, restaurants and Evans' Rendezvous, a nightclub that drew touring musicians.

It declined after desegregation and after Hurricane Dora in 1964. NaNa, Florida's tallest dune, is protected behind it, largely through the campaigning of MaVynee Betsch, Lewis's great-granddaughter. The A.L. Lewis Museum interprets it all — small, volunteer-run, limited hours, so check before you drive down.

Park at Burney Park. This is a living neighbourhood, not an attraction.

Then, if you have the day: Kingsley Plantation, forty minutes south in the Timucuan Preserve. The oldest surviving plantation house in Florida, and a semicircle of tabby cabins built and occupied by enslaved people growing Sea Island cotton. The cabins are the substantial thing on the site and the NPS interpretation puts them at the centre. It is a hard visit and the necessary counterpart to a day of forts and Victorian storefronts.

A note on our dates

Almost everything on this page is marked unverified in our data — the 1811 plat date, NaNa's height, the historic district's block count, the "last Spanish plat" claim, the fort's construction dates.

We are publishing our reading of the record and flagging it for checking against National Register nomination documents, the Florida Division of Historical Resources, the Amelia Island Museum of History and the NPS. Where we are uncertain we say so rather than smoothing it over. See our editorial policy.