Amelia Island When the Victorian Porches Talk

Amelia Island When the Victorian Porches Talk

Amelia Island is thirty minutes north of Jacksonville via A1A, and its town of Fernandina Beach is the antidote to everything modern Florida represents. The Centre Street historic district is a fifty-block National Register district of Victorian, Queen Anne, and Italianate buildings that survived because the town's economy declined after the railroad moved south, and what poverty preserved, the 20th-century tourists eventually restored.

The Palace Saloon at 117 Centre Street has been open since 1903, making it the oldest continuously operating bar in Florida, and the hand-carved mahogany bar, the stamped tin ceiling, and the murals on the walls behind the bottles create an atmosphere that the craft cocktail movement has spent two decades trying to manufacture from scratch. The drinks are simple. The room does the work.

The beach at Amelia Island's south end — Fort Clinch State Park — is wide, uncrowded, and backed by a Civil War-era brick fort that is still impressively intact, its casemates and parade ground maintained by rangers and populated on weekends by living-history interpreters who portray the Union garrison that occupied the fort. The beach itself allows vehicles (with a permit), and driving on the hard-packed sand near the waterline while pelicans fish the surf is a Northeast Florida experience that no boardwalk can replace.

Practical notes: Take A1A north from Jacksonville — the Talbot Island state parks along the way are worth stopping at. Fernandina Beach's Centre Street has restaurants, shops, and galleries in a four-block walkable core. The shrimp boats still dock at the town marina, and the annual Isle of Eight Flags Shrimp Festival in May is the largest festival in the area.