Beaches, colleges and having the most land inside of city limits are just a small part of what it means to live in Jacksonville.
Whether you’ve lived here your whole life or just moved in, there are some things you seriously ought to know about this crazy town filled with palm trees, surf and golf courses. Take a look at these Jacksonville facts — some of which are pretty crazy — and get the lowdown on the city. You’ll sound like a real local in no time and be the best tour guide around when friends pop in for a visit to Jax. Just don’t forget your sunblock for all those sunny, hot days.
41 Jacksonville facts any good Jaxson knows
1. Jacksonville has the largest square mileage within city limits in the nation, with over 875 square miles of land. It’s also the most populous city in both the state of Florida and the southeastern United States. Now, I hear you — what about Miami or Atlanta? Jacksonville has all those people within city limits while the other cities include the greater metro areas for their population counts.
2. Overall, Jax is the 12th most populous city in the country. Crazy Jacksonville fact, right?
3. The highest point in Jacksonville only rises to 190 feet above sea level, on the Trail Ridge, along the boundary with Baker County.
4. At one point, the Friendship Fountain, located in downtown Jax, was the largest and tallest fountain in the world (when it was built). The fountain remains one of the city’s most recognizable landmarks and, of course, a popular attraction for tourists. The fountain was designed by Taylor Hardwick of Jacksonville and opened in 1965.
5. Folks from this city on the east coast of Florida are known as Jacksonvillians, Jaxsons or Jaxons.
6. Jacksonville has become a prime real estate location, with tons of foreign investors buying things up. The city is considered one of the 20 busiest real estate towns in the country. So, better get that search going and rent your dream Jacksonville apartment before someone beats you to it!
7. The Fort Caroline National Memorial marks the location of the first European settlement in Florida in 1564. The original settlement was destroyed by Spanish conquerors in 1565, though, so not much remains of that original settlement.
8. Big cat lovers adore Jacksonville. The Catty Shack Ranch Wildlife Sanctuary is located here and is a forever home for rescued big cats. You’ll find lions, tigers, cougars, bobcats, leopards and others here, where they’re loved and cared for. You can visit whenever they’re open and learn more about the plight of big cats in captivity and the wild.
9. Jacksonville was the original Hollywood. In the early 1900s, the city was the motion-picture capital of the world and had a production industry long before L.A. was a thing. It was known as the “Winter Film Capital of the World.”
10. The Dames Point Bridge, when constructed in 1989, was the longest cable-stayed concrete bridge in the world. It’s still the second-longest in the Western Hemisphere.
11. In 1910, Jacksonville became the first place where “The Blues” were officially performed. A performance given at LaVilla was dubbed with the term and it stuck.
12. Speaking of Blues, the Springing the Blues Festival in Jacksonville Beach is one of the largest and longest-running blues fests in the country.
13. Jacksonville isn’t just the birthplace of the Blues — the city also holds claim to the name Birthplace of Southern Rock.
14. A few big-name bands got their start in Jax, including Limp Bizkit, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Allman Brothers Band, .38 Special, Yellowcard and Shinedown.
15. Other celebrities out of Jax include Bob Gandy, Al Denson, Rosalie King-Simpson, Ashley Greene, Lil Duval, Whitney Thompson and Pat Boone, to name a few.
16. Jax is also the birthplace of Don Estridge, the father of the personal computer.
17. In 1964, the Beatles refused to play for their planned Jacksonville audience until organizers desegregated the crowds.
18. The city is located along the banks of the St. John’s River, both the longest river in the state and one of the very few rivers in the world that flows from south to north.
19. Jacksonville got its name from the seventh president of the United States, Andrew Jackson. He was the first military governor of the state as well.
20. Cowford was Jacksonville’s original name. There were more cows grazing on the banks of the St. John’s River than people in the town at the time.
21. Some of the oldest pottery pieces ever found in the U.S. date back to around 2,500 B.C. and come from Jacksonville. That’s a pretty cool Jacksonville fact.
22. Elvis Presley gave his first indoor concert as a headlining act in Jacksonville’s Florida Theater in 1956.
23. Jacksonville’s Florida Theater was built between 1926 and 1927 and took over one million bricks to complete and was the first time ready-mixed mortar was used in the South. It was also the first major building in downtown Jax to have full air-conditioning installed.
24. The Florida Theater also remains one of only four high-style movie palaces from the ’20s. If you take a walk through it, you’ll notice aspects of the Mediterranean Revival architecture which had a boom in the state during the ’20s.
25. Jacksonville’s founding father, Isaiah David Hart, was a bit of a scamp. He was accused of some cattle thievery (a hangable offense in those days) along the Florida-Georgia line in his early life. He returned to Jax (still called Cowford, of course) later on with some cattle, and then founded the city along the river.
26. The Great Fire of May 3, 1901, considered the third-largest metropolitan fire in American history, lasted about eight hours and began as sparks flew off a mattress factory as piles of moss outside caught fire. The fire claimed seven lives.
27. The worst fire in the history of the city broke out 64 years later. The Roosevelt Hotel fire in 1963 claimed 22 lives.
28. In 1886, Jacksonville experienced a severe earthquake that shook the whole town. It didn’t do serious damage, but the disturbance lasted 11 minutes, with more tremors occurring for another almost two months. This was the same earthquake that shook Charleston which destroyed hundreds of buildings and took dozens of lives. The same earthquake was felt as far west as Chicago and as far north as Boston.
29. In the early 1900s, the city’s largest tourist attraction was an ostrich farm was located along the Southbank. Sadly, the farm closed in 1937.
30. Prior to colonization, the Timucuan people inhabited Jacksonville. They thrived on the land until the colonists came and exposed them to countless diseases, reducing their numbers by more than two-thirds by 1595.
31. The city does occasionally get snow. There are loads of photos of folks sledding down hills in 1989, for example, enjoying the wonder of the powdery white stuff.
32. Bessie Coleman died while performing in an air show in Jax. She was the first female pilot of African-American descent and the first African American to hold an international pilot license. Known as Queen Bess, the pilot performed in an air show when her plane made an unexpected dive. She fell from the plane some 2,000 feet to her death. There is a bronze memorial plaque for Coleman at the front doors of Paxton School for Advanced Studies in Jacksonville.
33. The oldest living thing in Jacksonville is the Treaty Oak. A Southern live oak located in Jessie Ball DuPont Park downtown. Experts estimate the tree is over 250 years old and believed to be the oldest living thing in the city.
34. It might be hard to believe, but Jacksonville has the largest urban park system in the country — yes, out-doing Central Park in New York City by a fair pace. Jacksonville has over 80,000 acres of parks, including two national parks, a national preserve, 400 city parks and gardens, an arboretum and seven state parks. The Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, alone, covers 46,000 of those acres.
35. Jax receives an average of 221 sunny days each year — part of the reason Florida has the nickname the Sunshine state!
36. In Jacksonville alone, the military employs over 30,000 active duty personnel and almost 20,000 civilians, making it the largest employer in Duval county.
37. Jacksonville is home to more than 1,100 miles of shoreline! That makes it more abundant here than in any other city in the state. Included in that are 22 miles of white sand beaches.
38. Jax is home to the largest Filipino-American community in Florida.
39. World of Nations Celebration is North Florida’s largest multicultural event and has been taking place in Jacksonville since 1993.
40. Gate River Run is the largest 15K race in the country. Initially, the race, named the Jacksonville River Run, started in 1978.
41. Famously called the “World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party,” Jacksonville hosts the annual college football game between the University of Florida Gators and the Georgia Bulldogs — giving the game neutral turf.
Now you know the best Jacksonville facts
Grab a cocktail, slap on some teal and gold paint and let the world know you’re a real Jaxson with all these Jacksonville facts when you hit up the game.
Source: rent.com