McCoys Creek is a tributary of the St. Johns River, flowing eastward from the Murray Hill neighborhood before emptying into the river near Downtown Jacksonville. Over the years, the creek has undergone significant changes, including channelization and rerouting. Today, it is the focus of an extensive restoration effort aimed at returning it to a more natural and resilient state.
Here is a collection of photographs taken by the city of Jacksonville in 1926, offering a glimpse of McCoys Creek nearly a century ago.
The Riverside Viaduct was a T-Shaped bridge used to carry automobile and streetcar traffic over the Florida East Coast Railway. It connected Riverside Avenue in Brooklyn with Broad Street in LaVilla. In 1921, the original north approach to the Acosta Bridge became an extension of the viaduct. During the early 1990s, the viaduct was replaced with a new Acosta Bridge interchange.
Sandwiched between Jacksonville’s major railroad depots and the riverfront, West Bay Street emerged as a place where early settlers arrived from Southern Greece and Turkey as sailors from ships that docked along the riverfront. Situated along West Bay Street, the district featured Greek-owned restaurants, fruit markets, hotels and bodegas serving the large transient population in the vicinity of the railroad terminals, riverfront docks and wholesale businesses supported by them. But after World War 2, urban renewal, technological changes in the logistics industry and the closure of the Downtown passenger rail terminal brought a decline to a neighborhood once characterized with international flair.
Once known as the Gateway City, Jacksonville was a major railroad center for more than 50 years. The Jacksonville Terminal Co. was a partnership made up of the rail lines that served the terminal complex, all of which still loom large in today’s transportation world: Florida East Coast Railway (started by Standard Oil principal Henry Flagler), Southern Railway (now Norfolk Southern Railway) and the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad Co. (now CSX Transportation). At its height, the Jacksonville Terminal Co. employed more than 2,000 people, making it the second-largest employer in the city at the time.
In 1801, Philip Dell received an 800-acre Spanish land grant to establish a plantation on the south side of McCoys Creek and the west bank of the St. Johns River. The site became known as Dell’s Bluff, named for the 16-foot-high bluffs lining the river’s western shore. During the Civil War, the property served as one of the few campsites for regiments of the U.S. Colored Troops during the Union occupation of Jacksonville.
Following the war, Confederate veteran Miles Price acquired the former plantation in 1868. The next year, he sold the southern 500 acres to John Murray Forbes for $10,000 in gold. Forbes developed the land into what became the neighborhood of Riverside. In 1869, Price platted the northern portion as the neighborhood of Brooklyn. Located near several rail lines, Brooklyn quickly became a hub for freedmen, freedwomen and their descendants…