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Fernandina Beach/ By Nancy and Richard Woodworth The eight flags that have flown over historic Amelia Island are unfurled daily across the front of Florida’s oldest surviving hotel. They add color to the evocative, two-tone green and red facade of the Florida House Inn. And they add to the festive feeling of an island with a swashbuckling past, a developing present and a promising future. Amelia Island is a thirteen-mile-long stretch of sand and palms northeast of Jacksonville. Separated from Georgia only by the Cumberland Sound, Florida’s northernmost barrier island more resembles Georgia’s Golden Isles than Florida in its climate, topography and lifestyle. Its location at what was the early frontier of Florida explains its shifting fortunes. Discovered by the French in 1562, it has been ruled by Spanish, British, pirates, patriots and Confederates – the only U.S. territory to have survived under eight different flags. Touted as "The Queen of Summer Resorts" by American Resorts magazine in 1896, the island lost its initial luster as Henry Flagler’s railroad drew tourists to the "new Florida" farther south. Fernandina Beach, the island’s only town, became embedded in a Victorian time capsule – a Southern copy of what happened up north to Cape May, N.J. Development occurred rather lately as the Amelia Island Plantation and Ritz-Carlton resorts lured vacationers for broad beaches and 90 holes of golf. The opening of the Ritz in 1990 gave the island cachet, and sleepy Fernandina Beach awoke with a flurry of upscale inns and B&Bs, restaurants and shops. With 450 ornate structures built before 1927 and few since, the 50-block historic district was ripe for the Victorian B&B experience. The island is more a "feeling" than an array of tourist attractions. Other than golfing and beaching, the main pastime for visitors is to walk the streets of Fernandina’s historic district, soaking up the richest concentration of Victorian architecture between Cape May and Key West. Besides the oldest hotel, the town offers Florida’s oldest saloon and its only oral history museum. It’s the shrimping capital of America, and stages an annual Shrimp Festival the first weekend of May. Amelia Island is making up for lost time in terms of development, and locals wonder what the new century has in store. But the core town of Fernandina Beach will remain attached to its past, drawing visitors who prefer it that way. Material excerpted from Inn Spots & Special Places in the Southeast, by Nancy and Richard Woodworth. Copyright 2000. Wood Pond Press E-mail feedback to: Home
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