Spring Park Neighborhood Association

About our association

SOUTHSIDE

Always South Jacksonville has been linked with the big city just across the St. Johns River. Between 1907 and 1932 South Jacksonville was a separate city know as the Magic City and "a small dirty place," depending on the point of view.

South Jacksonville was rooted in the 1790s and interlocked by marriage between three families, Hendricks, Hudnall and Philips. "South Jacksonville" originally was east of what is now the Main Street Bridge, Okahoma west and Villa Alexandra where San Marco is now.

Atlantic Boulevard from Jacksonville to the Beaches opened the town when it debuted in 1910, three years after the Legislature created the town of South Jacksonville. The town was served by the Florida East Coast Railway and quickly attracted shipyards, a fertilizer factory, a brick pit and a railroad terminal yard. In 1915 the Florida Ostrich and Alligator Farm relocated there from Fairfield. The Jacksonville-St. Johns River Bridge opened in 1921, in time for the Florida Boom and Prohibition, and South Jacksonville became the jumping off point for moonshine and Miami.

In time, subdivisions were carved out of the brick pit, the old plantations and reclaimed marshland. Soon the entire region became known as South Jacksonville, although to the untained eye, it is east, not south, of what used to be the big city.

St. Nicholas Cemetary

The St. Nicholas Cemetary hides in a quiet part of the St. Nicholas neighborhood on the Jacksonville's Southside.

Neighborhood Formed in 1996

The Spring Park Neighborhood Association was formed in 1996 by two citizens who were determined to make a difference in their community. By going door to door to inform the community that they wanted to start a neighborhood association so there would be voices heard on issues concerning the community. The Association will be celebrating their 8th year January 2005.