Jacksonville stands out in few ways

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – After Emily Lisska, the executive director, had escorted a group of local school children through the Jacksonville Historical Society on Friday, it was time for the standard tour-ending question.

“So, children,” she began, “what do you think was the most historic event ever in Jacksonville?”

Eagerly, they shouted their answer in unison.

“The Super Bowl!”

Even Lisska had to admit it was “an arguable point.”

While Super Bowl XXXIX’s participants hail from two of the most history-rich cities in the United States, Jacksonville’s low-key legacy isn’t likely to be the subject of a Ken Burns documentary anytime soon.

Boston and Philadelphia were the epicenters of the American Revolution when the area that is now Jacksonville was a cow-crossing in an out-of-the-way British territory.

The Civil War didn’t bring any lasting glory or ignominy here. The city’s pro-North leanings spared it from major battles.

About the only things worth noting about Jacksonville between the end of the Civil War and the early 20th century were that it was a favorite spot for rich Northern vacationers and that it briefly served as a spring training site for both the Philadelphia Phillies and Philadelphia Athletics.

Oddly, the most notable event in the history of the city was also the one that came closest to destroying it – the great fire of 1901.

“It was the third-greatest metropolitan fire in U.S. history, the worst ever in the South,” Lisska said. “It was a rolling tide of fire. Before it was through, it had destroyed 2,368 buildings, 148 city blocks.”

On May 4, 1901, an ember ignited a large pile of moss that workers at the Cleveland Fiber Factory used for upholstery and for stuffing mattresses. Before the flames could be extinguished, an east wind carried them to adjoining buildings, most of them constructed of soft Florida pine.

“Jacksonville was so thoroughly destroyed that today there are very few buildings remaining from before 1901,” said Lisska, whose society is housed in one of them, on A. Philip Randolph Boulevard, a few blocks west of Alltel Stadium, where next Sunday’s game will be played.

The city, which had at various times in the previous 300 years been occupied by the Timucuan Indians, the Spanish, French and British, was not founded until 1822, 23 years before Florida became a state.

Before that, it had been little more than a place where farmers and their cows crossed the St. Johns River. That’s why many history books still contend – mistakenly, according to Lisska – that Jacksonville’s original name was Cowford.

A commercial center for the surrounding indigo plantations at the time of its founding, the city was named for Andrew Jackson. The future president had been a territorial governor of Florida and was, according to Lisska, “a heroic and beloved figure in the state.”

During the Civil War, Jacksonville’s mayor let it be known that the city would provide no resistance to Northern troops. Even then, the city’s sensibilities, according to Lisska, were so pro-Northern that Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” helped ignite the abolition movement, briefly moved there. “She and others were going to try to establish a different kind of Southern city here,” Lisska said.

On the personal side, Jacksonville’s history isn’t any more spectacular. It doesn’t include a Ben Franklin or Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Perhaps the city’s most famous native sons were James Weldon Johnson, the African-American poet, teacher and civil-rights activist, and Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, who was elected governor and U.S. senator.

Merrill Lynch founder Charles Merrill was a native of Jacksonville, as were most of the band Lynyrd Skynyrd. Pat Boone was also born in the city.

Ray Charles and Sheryl Crow also both lived there for a time.