From Azaleas to Zydeco: My 4,600-Mile Journey through the South

The First Coast

The First Coast Branding—creating catchy names for places—can sometimes go too far. In Florida, branding has gotten out of hand. Due east of Orlando is the Space Coast, which has famous Cape Canaveral, Kennedy Space Center, and rocket ship launchings. To the north is the two-county Fun Coast, which includes Daytona Beach. After the Fun Coast, the First Coast emerges. In the branding world, First Coast has two meanings: It establishes the area as the first place Europeans landed in America, and it recognizes the first beach coast that northerners hit when crossing into Florida. Florida has 399 miles of Atlantic Coast and twice that amount of coast on the Gulf of Mexico. That’s a lot of coastline development. After a while, all beach development starts to look the same. From the Fun Coast northward there are small beachfront homes and large condo projects facing the blue seas of the Atlantic Ocean. There are also plenty of seafood places. But if sand, sea, and humidity are not your thing, you’re in the wrong place. Driving into St. Augustine on the old road, Florida A1A brings you face to face with the area’s dual personality. St. Augustine, a relatively small town of 12,000 people, constitutes the southern point of the First Coast. Founded in 1565 by the Spanish, it’s the oldest European settlement in the continental United States. Sites along the road authentically represent the history of this very, very old place—the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, for example. 368 St. Augustine has a long history of catering to tourists. There are also truly historic tourist attractions, like Ripley’s Believe It or Not! and the St. Augustine Alligator Farm, incorporated in 1908. Floridians get their first chance to lift dollars from vacationing snowbirds at these venues. Outlet malls, miniature golf, water activities—they’re all here. (But I didn’t find any purveyors of fresh-dipped corn dogs as I had in Gatlinburg.) The northern side of the First Coast is Jacksonville, Florida’s largest city, with a population of 875,000. Jacksonville is also America’s largest city in terms of land mass. Jacksonville consolidated with Duval County years ago, creating a municipal area of 875 square miles. Politically, merging the city and the county was a progressive move. The city fathers haven’t always been that progressive. In the early part of the twentieth century, the film industry, then located in New York City, wintered in Jacksonville. The industry found Jacksonville’s mild winter climate and its beaches, buildings, and swamps great locations to shoot their silent films. In the days before tax credits, the industry developed a five-building complex on the river for film-making. One studio building of the five remains standing, and it has been converted into a museum celebrating Florida’s silent film history. Ultimately, the film industry moved west to California due largely to the conservative political climate in Jacksonville. Jacksonville is located at the mouth of the St. Johns River, one of the few rivers in America that flows northward. The St. Johns starts in central Florida and winds its way northward. It moves slowly because Florida is so flat. There is only a drop of thirty feet from the headwaters of the St. Johns to its mouth. Jacksonville has bridge crossings that rival San Francisco’s. It’s hard to believe how high they build bridges these days. From the bridge in Jacksonville, you get a great view of the Port of Jacksonville, which handles twenty-one million tons of cargo each year. Crossing the St. Johns River is certainly more impressive than crossing the Mississippi River into New Orleans or at Greenville on the new bridge. Between the two posts of the First Coast lies a good example of modern Florida. Former scrub land now has carefully manicured second homes and retirement locations. It’s crowded here. Except for a few years, 369 Florida has increased its population every year during the past two generations . Many of the new residents came to the First Coast. One lady remarked to me, “I wonder how many more people this big sand bar can hold before it sinks.” The center of the First Coast is Ponte Vedra. Ponte Vedra is reported to be named after Pontevedra, Spain, the name of the town one of the original developers mistakenly thought was...