By: Alan Aptheker

Arlington was one of the first areas in the United States visited by Europeans; it was the site of the French Fort Caroline, built in 1564-1565.  French explorer René Goulaine de Laudonnière, led a contingent of 200 new settlers to Florida. They built Fort Caroline atop a high river vantage point now called “St. Johns Bluff.”  But the colony was beset by hunger, Indian attacks, and mutiny.  Even so, it looked like an attractive option for the  Spanish authorities who considered it a challenge to their control over the area.

Enter the daring Spaniard Don Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, who violently evicted the French.  The French retreated 35 miles south, where they established the first settlement of St. Augustine.  Today, Fort

By: Alan Aptheker

In the 1870s and 1880s, Harriet Beecher Stowe and her family vacationed in what is now North Mandarin, on their St. Johns River estate. While living there after the Civil War, Stowe wrote Palmetto Leaves, arguably an eloquent piece of promotional literature directed at Florida's potential Northern investors at the time. The book was published in 1873 and describes Northeast Florida and its residents.  In 1870, Stowe created an integrated school in Mandarin for children and adults. This predated the national movement toward integration by more than a half century.

By: Alan Aptheker

The history of the Ortega includes a number of interesting characters, some more dubious than others: Famed botanist William Bartram; highwayman and cattle rustler Daniel McGirtt; and Don Juan McQueen, who attempted to establish a plantation on his 1791 Ortega land grant, but was forced to leave due to attacks by Georgians from the north and French armies to the south.  Gangster George "Machine Gun" Kelly and his wife were rumored to be the mysterious couple who abruptly left their rented Ortega Grand Avenue home hours before a midnight police raid in 1933.

By: Alan Aptheker

In the early 1900s, Jacksonville was home to more than 30 movie studios. At that time, movie makers needed natural sunlight—and lots of it—to make films. The industry was centered in New York and New Jersey, and their gray, overcast winters meant a virtual shut-down for months at a time. The Jacksonville studios churned out hundreds of silent films until filmmakers discovered Southern California, and the rest is Hollywood history.