Beginning as a summer resort for the wealthy, the oceanfront of Jacksonville has morphed into an outrageously popular tourist destination, stretching from Mayport to Ponte Vedra Beach. Encompassing a fishing village, luxury hotels, a carnival, railroads, mines and flocks of tourists, these beaches have a vast and eclectic history. Discover how Mayport became an adjunct of one of the largest naval bases in the United States and how a former mine called Mineral City became Ponte Vedra. Noted historian Don Mabry traces the fascinating history of what he still considers home from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first in this warm account of the "World's Finest Beach."

Beginning as a summer resort for the wealthy, the oceanfront of Jacksonville has morphed into an outrageously popular tourist destination, stretching from Mayport to Ponte Vedra Beach. Encompassing a fishing village, luxury hotels, a carnival, railroads, mines and flocks of tourists, these beaches have a vast and eclectic history. Discover how Mayport became an adjunct of one of the largest naval bases in the United States and how a former mine called Mineral City became Ponte Vedra. Noted historian Don Mabry traces the fascinating history of what he still considers home from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first in this warm account of the "World's Finest Beach."